Celebrating Solstice with ET
by WogglebugLover-AvengingAtheist
Summary: E.T.'s family on Earth invite him to spend their holidays with them. When he visits the Earth for the second time he learns much more about the world of humans, while at the same time also teaching the humans a lot. Including the actual meaning behind their holiday and history, and how they have nothing whatever to do with any religion.
1. Chapter 1

_December 16, 1982_

Elliot stood in front of his bedroom window, his elbows rested on the sill. He gazed wistfully through the glass of the closed window, which was framed with frost. He looked at the sky, which was cloudless tonight, and black as ink. He saw stars sprinkled and scattered in every place on the enormous black canvas. Some were big, some were tiny, and some were in-between. Some were brighter than others, though they all really shone brilliantly.

Elliot sighed as he began to remember. Almost two months ago he had met a very curious and friendly little creature who lived amongst the stars. He had at first been afraid of it, until he realized it was really lonely and scared itself, and took it into his home. He had shown it to his brother Michael, and sister Gertie, but had thought it best not to tell their mother. The three of them had fun with the creature they named E.T. until it become it became apparent that he must return to his own home and planet. Then E. T. suddenly became terminally ill, at the same time the government found out about him and their house had been surrounded by scientists. E.T.'s illness got worse and worse, and he actually died, and was somehow resurrected. His family had then come for him in their Spaceship and taken him home, to the Green Planet.

Elliot could still feel the long hug he and E.T. had given each other just before he left, and E.T.'s last words to him, "_I'll be right here"_. Now that Christmas was approaching he thought about E.T. more than ever. After all, wasn't Christmas a time when one thought always of those he loved? As well as a time to be with them?

His mother, Mary, now entered the room. She smiled as she saw him daydreaming at his window. She came over at sat down beside him.

"Thinking of him, aren't you," she said softly.

Elliot nodded. "I often wonder, where is he, how is he?"

Mary smiled as she leaned closer and looked at the stars with him. "You were his best friend, and you were there to take him in when no one else was. Wherever he is now, he will never forget that."

Elliot smiled now. "It's almost Christmas now, you know? And, I just wish I could give him something," he pondered.

"Well, why don't you invite him to spend Christmas here?" Mary suggested.

Elliot looked at her. He hadn't thought of that.

"We still have the transmitter thing you built with him, and it worked before." Mary pointed out.

Elliot's face lit up. "That's a great idea!" he said. "You think he'll come?"

"I don't see why not," Mary replied. "I'm sure he misses us, just as we all miss him."

Elliott nodded. After a moment, Mary gave a yawn and said, "Best be going to bed now." and left his room.

Elliot looked to the stars for just one more moment and whispered, "Merry Christmas, E.T., wherever you are."

* * *

The next day there was no school as Christmas Vacation had began. Elliot came down to breakfast he met with his siblings and asked them, "Do you remember E.T.?"

"Of course," said Michael. "We thought we'd be helping him, but he was really helping all of us." He sighed as he remembered.

"I miss him," moaned Gertie.

"So do I," said Elliot. "And that's the point. I think we ought to invite for Christmas by way of the transmitter he built. What do you think?"

"Why didn't I think of that? I love that idea!" said Michael happily. "I'd love to see the little squashy guy again!"

"Me too!" Gertie chimed in sweetly. "Maybe I'll be able to take him for show and tell, when school starts again!" she added hopefully.

So, that very afternoon, Elliot, Gertie, and Michael found the transmitter, which was made of an umbrella, a record player, a circular saw blade, a light bulb, and Gertie's Speak and Spell.

Elliot dialed a message in the dialect E.T. had taught him. It said,

_Dear E.T., we all miss you and would like for you to come visit and spend Christmas with us. Love Elliot and family._

They then placed the transmitter on the roof. For two days they waited and received no response. Then, on the third day, a message appeared which said,

_Elliot, I will come visit you for Christmas. Look for the Spaceship tonight.  
Love E.T.  
P.S. I miss you._

Elliot was overjoyed. He was going to see his best friend again!

That night it snowed, and Elliot, Michael, Gertie, and Mary stood close together in the forest clearing as they waited with anticipation for E.T.'s return.

Soon they saw a bright light appear in the sky, as they watched it grew bigger and brighter, seeming to fill the whole sky, taking the shape of E.T.'s Spaceship. It appeared before them in all its glory, looking itself like a Christmas tree ornament, it's many lights casting a most beautiful rainbow pattern on the snowflakes, making them look like multicolored dots in the air.

The Spaceship continued its descend, letting off steam and melting some snowflakes in the air. It landed very gracefully and gently onto the snow covered ground, supporting itself on pistols.

Elliot was breathing hard and could see his breath evaporating in the icy air. He was clasping his hands together tightly, and not just from the chill in the weather. He stared unblinking as a door of the Spaceship opened and a ramp was let down.

As he continued to watch, he saw E.T. appear in the doorway. E.T. descended the Spaceship's ramp with that endearing little shuffle of his. He stepped off, onto the snow, extending his long arms and said, "Greetings, gentle Earthlings! E.T. glad to be back!"

Elliot felt like his heart was going to explode with happiness, for here was E.T., his best friend. He looked exactly how he remembered him from his very short legs and very long arms, to his extending neck, to his great big, wide, round eyes, which seemed more blue than anything.

Elliot ran to E.T. and embraced the little alien, at the same time Gertie did, it was fortunate E.T. could easily hug them both with his extra long arms.

"E.T... love you," he said, as Gertie covered his face with kisses.

Michael came over and knelt beside them as he tenderly rubbed E.T.'s long, eggplant shaped head.

Mary looked on and thought how strange yet amazingly wonderful it was for her three children to find so much love and attachment in one cute little alien.


	2. Chapter 2

Elliot and his family led their little extra-terrestrial friend to their house, and then Elliot led him upstairs to his room. Once they were inside Elliot looked at E.T. and said, "E.T. I am so happy to see you again, especially at this time of year!"

He looked at the ancient voyager and thought of how lucky he was that he had chosen to spend Christmas with him on Earth when he could have been in any other galaxy, on any other planet. His blue eyes were shining with love and joy as his mouth was curved slightly in a sweet smile which let him know that there was no place he would rather be right now than right here with him.

"E.T. happy to see you, Elliot, again," he said in his aged, gravelly, yet gentle and loving alien voice.

Elliot smiled delightedly. He reached over to the nightstand beside his bed and found the picture that Mary had taken on E.T.'s first visit. It was at Halloween and Elliot was dressed up like a hunchback, and Michael was dressed up to look like a hippie, and they were each holding onto a hand of E.T.'s as the little creature was hidden underneath a white sheet, pretending to be Gertie dressed up like a ghost.

"Remember when this was taken?" Elliot asked as he handed E.T. the picture which was now in a frame.

E.T. smiled and purred as his big blue eyes focused in on the image of himself underneath the sheet in the picture. He chuckled as he remembered how when it had been taken a flash of light had appeared so suddenly and brightly that he had fainted instantly. He remembered when he had fainted like that once before when his captain had steered their spaceship a little too close to a cosmic sun.

"You've learned about Halloween, and now you'll learn about Christmas," Elliot went on excitedly as he set the picture onto the stand again. "It's my favorite time of year! It's so much fun! There is no school, and everyone gets together and gets happy together, and everyone gives out presents and gets one in return, and then there's Christmas cookies, and Santa Claus, and..."

"Slow down!" said E.T. gently as he held his hands up against Elliot's breathless speaking. "E. one at time only."

Elliot smiled. "Sorry, E.T. Sometimes I talk too fast when I'm excited," he said with a slightly embarrassed chuckle.

"E.T. has noticed before," he replied with a kindly smile.

"Your English has improved, I see," said Elliot as he remembered when E.T. last visited he had only learned a few English words and phrases.

E.T. smiled and nodded. "E.T. has been studying at home with scholars. I'm far from perfect, but I can now tell you all you want to know about me."

"Really?" Elliot never had any need for words to understand E.T., and yet now there were so many things he wanted to know about him. He spoke the first question that came into his mind. "How old are you?"

"I am seven-thousand years old, but I am young."

Elliot smiled and was just about to ask another question when E.T. yawned softly and pressed his long fingers against his mouth. He smiled knowing that E.T. must be tired after his long journey. He took him by the hand and gently led him over to a small cot that was laid out beside his own bed.

"I made it just for you," he said as E.T. laid his pudgy little body down onto the cot, resting his head on a pillow that was designed especially for it's shape.

E.T. smiled sweetly as Elliot draped a quilt over him and tucked him in. "All planets I visited, never made me feel as special as you," he said and closed his eyes sleepily as he sighed with contentment.

As Elliot laid down onto his own bed he looked at the peacefully sleeping E.T. on the cot for a moment and remembered when he had first came to him. . .

_As Elliot stepped outside into the cool October evening he shined his flashlight all around his backyard, and finding that nothing was there he sat down in a lawn chair by the garage and pulling his sleeping bag up to his chest he sat still and placed a bag of Reese's Pieces in his lap. He held the flashlight tightly in his left hand and kept his focus straight ahead as he watched and waited for it to appear. Just the other night he had seen a unknown creature in the cornfield that had terrified him, though somehow it seemed the creature had been more frightened than he was, so this morning he had left a trail of Reese's Pieces for it leading from the park to the edge of the entrance to his house. So now all he had to do was wait._

_Hours went by and there was still no sign of it. Elliot was growing more and more sleepy by the minute, he could barely keep his eyes open. Then finally his eyes closed and he fell fast asleep. Only a second later he heard a sudden shuffling noise coming from ahead of him. Startled, he opened his eyes and gasped as he was suddenly wide awake, for there standing at just the edge of the entrance ahead of him, was the creature._

_He sat up and held his flashlight as he stared fixedly ahead at the queer little creature partially concealed by the shadows. It had a blob-like body with a long and flat head, and long, wiry arms that touched the ground as it began to move forward on two very small and flat feet with a strange, awkward kind of waddle._

_As Elliot watched the creature move towards him his heart began to beat rapidly with fear as his breathing became heavy. He had always been afraid of strangers, and this was the strangest of all. He tried to cry out for his mother and brother, but he was so frightened he could only squeak. _

_The creature waddled slowly up to him, stopping every few seconds and then coming ever closer. It somehow seemed anxious to reach him as it could clearly be heard breathing heavily. As Elliot watched it unable to move every nightmare he had ever had, every time he was ever afraid of something, raced through his mind in the form of a horror movie on fast forward. _

_The creature was only a few feet from him as it slowly reached one of its very long arms out to him and slowly opened up its long fingered hand and gently dropped a small pile of Reese's Pieces onto his lap. He looked at them and soon realized that it had followed the trail he had left for it leading up to here and now it was giving a little of it back to him. _

_As he looked into the creature's face he saw that it's big, blue eyes were wide and gentle, and somehow seemed to be pleading with him. Was it the candy he wanted? He reached into the bag beside him and held some out to it, and it accepted them and soon there was a gentle crunching noise as it placed them into its wide mouth._

_As Elliot watched he saw that the creature was really harmless and felt that he couldn't leave it outside in the cold air. So he got out of his sleeping bag, got off the lawn chair and using his flashlight for a guiding light, he began making another trail of the Reese's Pieces for it as he began to lead it into his house._

_He left the Reese's Pieces at his doorstep, and then led the creature up the stairs as he made sure to leave a little of the candy on each step. When at last he reached his bedroom, he left a little pile of them at the doorway and watched as the creature's long fingers reached inside and began collecting them once again._

_Smiling, Elliot went over to his desk and laid down the nearly empty Reese's Pieces bag, and picked up an apple as he thought the creature might like this as well. However, when he went to the doorway of the room he found the creature was no longer there and was now inside of the room. He watched as it looked curiously at the many things that were on his dresser and began reaching up to them with its very long fingers and touching them and poking at them,and then his long fingers upset a tin can filled with pencils and there was a great clattering noise that followed, and then the creature threw back its long arms and upset a nearby shelf, making more noise._

_Elliot was suddenly in a panic as he hurriedly closed his door, he listened at it for a moment to make sure no one had woken up. Then he quickly took a woolen blanket off of his bunk bed and wrapped it around the creature to conceal it, and at first it reacted as it muttered nervously but then it relaxed as it clutched onto the blanket and seemed to take comfort from it._

_Elliot stepped back as he sighed with relief and looked at the creature in front of him. He now had a very good look at him, and he was no longer afraid of him at all. He looked him over from his oblong head, to his long, thin arms and round belly which were mostly covered by the blanket. He looked it into its turtle-like face with its great big blue eyes which were spread far apart and saw that they were gazing at him with the very same curious expression, as if they had never seen a human before._

_As he continued to look at him in awe and fascination, he just happened to bring up his hand and slightly scratch his nose. He watched in astonishment as the creature in front of him scratched its own pug-like nose in much the same way. Elliot thought for a moment, and then slightly touched two fingers to the corner of his mouth, and he then watched as the creature pressed two fingers to its own mouth which had a different shape from his own. Then he touched his hand to the side of his head and rubbed his ear slightly, and it did the same, although its ears weren't as easy to see. Then he held up his right hand with all five fingers spread and sure enough, it did the same, except that it had only four fingers which were twice as long as his. He then held out just one finger and crooked it slightly, which the creature did as well, in the very same way._

_Elliot smiled then, and so did the creature. It seemed they were the same, just a little different. Then he began to feel very sleepy, and he noticed that the creature's eyes were drooping as well. He yawned, and so did the creature and it closed its eyes as it held the blanket. It was quite late, and so Elliot stepped slowly backward and sat down into his comfortable armchair and drifted off to sleep._

_The creature looked at the boy's sleeping form in the chair and smiled as now he was sure that he had found someone whom he could trust._

The next morning as Elliot awoke from his slumber E.T. yawned as he opened his eyes and watched his human friend change out of his nightie-nights and into a new set of clothes. As he watched him with curiosity he found he was now able to ask the question he wanted to before.

"Why is it you wear... clothes?"

Elliot looked at E.T. as he tucked in his shirt and tried to think of a good answer for that. "We wear clothes for warmth... and for... dignity."

"Dignity...?" E.T. sounded out this word which seemed to be new to him.

Elliot tried his best to explain. "It means they show us who we are in way which we hope others will appreciate us that way, which makes us feel special."

E.T. listened to this information very carefully and tried to make sense of it, for his race never had the need for clothing as their planet was always comfortably humid, and as for dignity, he and his fellow botanists could always give each other their thoughts and feelings through their heart-lights which he doubted any one of them would want to conceal with needless clothing.

Just then they heard Elliot's mother call for them from downstairs. "Elliot, E.T., breakfast is ready!"

"Coming, Mom!" Elliot called back. He looked at E.T. and smiled. E.T. smiled and nodded in assurance.

Then Elliot took E.T.'s hand and led him down the stairs and into the kitchen where they found Michael and Gertie seated in their own chairs at the table while Mary served them plates of waffles with maple syrup and scrambled eggs and toast.

Elliot smiled as he pulled out a chair for E.T. and gently lifted him onto him, and then sat into his own chair and started on his waffles.

E.T. glanced around him and saw that he was surrounded my the four humans he had grown to love, and he knew he could trust, including Mary whom he had just barely gotten to know on his last visit but whom he loved nevertheless as she was the mother of the three children who had saved his life.

Carefully, he picked up a fork which was set beside his plate and dug it into his waffles and after taking off a large portion of it he placed it into his mouth just as he watched Elliot do. Then all at once his mouth was filled with a sensational taste he had never tasted before.

"This is just exquisite!" he exclaimed as he swallowed and looked towards Mary with his eyes shining.

"I'm so glad you like them!" said Mary with joy and relief. "I wasn't sure what to make for a visiting extra-terrestrial."

Gertie could hardly believe that E.T. was actually having breakfast with all of them just like he was a friend of the family, which of course he was, it was a dream come true.

"Why couldn't you speak before?" she asked as she noticed his improved vocabulary.

"I just did not know your language," E.T. explained."I hadn't known anything about humans before I was lost here last time, and now I am glad that I do know."

"Why were you lost here anyway?" asked Elliot.

E.T. told his story. "My companions and I were on a plant-collecting mission to Earth, you see I am a botanist and I study and take care of plants. We had been visiting Earth for plant samples for centuries, yet whenever made any contact with human-beings."

"Why not?" asked Gertie.

E.T. sighed with regret. "As I said we didn't know how humans were like,and we were afraid of them. We had only heard that they much bigger and more powerful than us, and about the damage they had done to their own planet in the past couple hundred years, and so avoided them altogether. Then there came that night I wandered far from our spaceship, and I looked over a hill to see your city below it, and then those men found me and chased me, I was never so scared in my life!"

"But how could you ran away from them when your legs are so short?" asked Michael.

"I use my arms to run," explained E.T. as he stretched out his arms a little so they could see how long they were. "I have strong arms, and so I escape them. But I did no make it to the spaceship in time. My companions were so in hurry they leave me accidentally. I thought my heart would break."

Elliot knew just how E.T. felt."But why were you willing to trust me if you were so afraid?"

"I had nothing to lose, you left me a trail of something that somehow gave me energy," he looked deeply Elliot's eyes with his own great blue orbs. "Then when we met there was something in you I really liked, as if we were meant to make contact."

Elliot smiled as he and E.T. transcended another memory to each other.

_Elliot watched from his bedroom window as his mother pulled out of the driveway, taking his sister and brother to school. Once they had left, he stood in front of his open closet in which the mysterious creature he had welcomed into his home the night before was hidden inside of._

_"Come on," he said gently as he knelt beside the closet and beckoned the creature out of it with his hand. "Don't be afraid. It's alright. Come on. Come on."_

_The creature waddled slowly out of the closet, still wrapped in the blanket Elliot had lent him last night, and stood in front of him._

_Elliot now had its full attention and he wondered if he could possibly speak with it. "Do you talk? You know, talk?" he asked it gently. The creature just looked at him silently, it somehow seemed confused._

_Elliot made another try as he gestured toward himself saying, "Me human. Boy... Elliot... El-li-ot... Elliot." He sounded out his name but the creature only continued to look at him as if he couldn't understand him at all._

_He watched as it turned its attention towards the many things that were on the table beside them. He noticed his curious expression and began to explain the things to him._

_"This is coke, see? We drink it," he said as he picked up a half empty can of soda and showed it to the creature. "It's... uh... it's a drink. You know... food." _

_These are toys," he showed it his action figures from_ Star Wars_, one of his favorite movies. "These are little men. This is Greedo, and then this is Hammerhead. See... this is Walrus Man, and then this is Snaggletooth, and this is Lando Calrissian. See? And this is Boba Fett. And, look, they can even have wars. Look at this!" He gave a brief demonstration as he played it out._

_"And look, fish," he said as he showed it his pet goldfish, two in a glass bowl full of water."The fish eat the fish food," he said as he put in a light sprinkling of it. "And the shark eats the fish." He dipped a plastic shark head on a stick into the fish bowl. "But nobody eats a shark."_

_"See. this is Pez," he went on as he held up a Pez dispenser. "Candy. See, you eat it. You put the candy in here, and then when you lift up the head, the candy comes out, and you can eat it! You want some? Oh, this is a peanut. You eat it. But you can't eat this one, 'cause this is fake." He pointed to his peanut shaped bank. "This is money." He held up a small silver disk. "See? We put the money in the peanut. He dropped the coin into the tiny opening in the plastic peanut. "You see? Bank. You see?"_

_"And then this is a car. This is what we get around in." He picked up one of his toy cars and held it out to the creature."You see? Car."_

_E.T. had been trying to listen carefully to Elliot's speech but it hadn't been easy because of his breathless delivery, and he was also very hungry as he hadn't eaten in twenty-four hours. He impulsively took hold of the toy car Elliot was holding out to him and sunk his teeth into its thin metal._

_"Hey! Hey, wait a second!" Elliot exclaimed as he quickly took the toy from the creature's hand. "No, you don't eat them! Are you hungry? I'm hungry." He looked understandingly at the hungry little creature._

_"Stay," he said as he began to slowly walk away from the creature. "Stay. I'll be right here," he assured it as he stepped over to the door. "I'll be right here." And with that he left the room with the creature alone inside it._

_Elliot entered into the kitchen and wondered what a creature like E.T. might like for breakfast. "Let's see... what would he want?" he wondered as he opened the refrigerator door. Looking inside he took hold of a bowl of fruit. "He'll like this," he thought. He reached in again and took hold of a quart of milk, "and this," he found a jar of peanut butter and of grape jelly, "and he'll like this," and he closed the refrigerator door, found a loaf of bread, and set to making two sandwiches for him and his guest._

_Once E.T. had been left alone, he looked around the strange room he was in, and then true to his nature he couldn't remain in the same spot for long. He waddled over to a corner of the room where he saw a very peculiar looking object which reminded him of a kind plant that he once studied. It had a long and skinny stem while its long leaves were drooping downward._

_Once he had reached the far end of the room, he took hold of the stem of the thing that looked like a plant, and as he did so he heard it click slightly and before he could blink the leaves of the plant opened up into his face and he saw a slight glint of something shiny in-between them. Then he suddenly remembered how the plant he once looked at before could really bite if it was touched in the wrong way._

_With a high-pitched shriek of horror, he leapt from the corner and into the closet in a second, and hid himself in the stuffed animals._

_Elliot had just made the sandwiches and had gathered everything he had chosen into his arms and was just to carry them out of the kitchen when all of sudden, for no reason known to him, he became frightened. His heart leapt into his throat as he let out a scream and dropped everything he was holding onto the floor as he jumped up as if he thought something was trying to catch him._

_A moment later he stood, backed up against the refrigerator door as he looked down at the things he had dropped. He took a deep breath to calm himself down as he put his hand over his rapidly beating heart, wondering what possibly could have frightened so suddenly like that._

_I hope I'm not going crazy! he thought as he bent down and gathered all of the things he had dropped into his arms again. Then, glad that at least no one had been around to see him act so crazy, he climbed the stairs to his room._

_Once he was inside the room again, he looked around for the creature but could find it nowhere. Then he heard it moaning pitifully from inside his closet. Stepping over to the closet, he moved a few stuffed animals out of the way and there he found it, trembling as if it were terrified._

_"Are you a okay? Too much excitement, huh?" Elliot said. "Want a coke?" he held out a can of soda to the creature. It just continued shivering from head to toe, and pointed a long, trembling finger at the object of it's terror across the room._

_Elliot followed the creature's finger. "I see you've found my umbrella," he said as he saw it lying open on the floor. As he went to the corner to pick it up, something very remarkable occurred to him. That the creature must have touched the umbrella and made it open, which must have frightened him if he didn't know what it was, and then when he was in the kitchen he had somehow felt his fright just as if it were his own. But how was such a thing possible?_

_He quickly decided that the mystery of it did not matter right now, and what did matter was reassuring the creature it had nothing to fear._

_He brought the umbrella over to the frightened and trembling E.T. and took hold of his left hand, holding it tightly in his own. "It's okay. Don't be afraid," he said soothingly. "It's just my umbrella. I use it to keep dry when it rains. It won't hurt you. See?" He held onto his umbrella and closed it, and then put it aside. Then he took hold of both of E.T.'s hands and pressed them into his own as he said, "Just as long as you're with me you'll always be safe. I'd never let anyone harm you."_

_Then another remarkable thing happened. As E.T. listened to Elliot he could not understand the words, and yet he also felt a real sense of trust and reassurance from him as he squeezed his hands. He calmed down and then the two of them started on their breakfast._

As Elliot remembered about that time, he looked over at E.T. and thought he really had come a long way from the frightened little creature he had first met him as.

Now Gertie had a question. "Why did you get so sick?"

E.T. became very reflective. "I wasn't used to the atmosphere of Earth, and I knew I couldn't last long after my companions left me behind, and my heart-light went out and I lost all my connection with them. I was alone. I worried I'd be lost from them forever, the more I thought of that the sadder I became, and I began to feel very bad inside, I couldn't breath."

"And then... did you really die?" Gertie asked after a moment of silence.

"I don't know... I suppose I did," E.T. admitted. "I thought I'd been asleep... then I began to awake... at first it was cold... and then it got warmer, and warmer... and then I saw the face of my captain as I felt my heart-light turn on and I heard him say they were on their way for me." He sighed happily as he remembered.

"What is your home like? What is it called?" Gertie was suddenly curious.

"It is called The Green Planet, because it grows more plants than any other in the Universe," E.T. was quite happy to be able to talk of his home planet. "I take care of many plants as I am one of the head botanists there, and the plants take care of us also. They keep our atmosphere clean and warm and comfortable, and that keeps us happy. Everyone is always caring of each other."

As E.T. continued to tell them about his home, Michael listened with intense interest and a smile on his face. He had always dreamed of meeting an alien, or at least someone like E.T., and yet he was always sure he never would, and yet E.T. came along, and now here was again with all of them.

He could remember when he had first met E.T. just like it was yesterday...

_He had just returned home from football practice, he entered into the kitchen and got himself a coke from the fridge. Then when he climbed the stairs, he saw the door of Elliot's room open._

_"Mike! Mike, come in!" Elliot called to him eagerly._

_He came to him and stood in the doorway. "How you feeling' faker?" he teasingly asked._

_"I'm feeling fine," Elliot replied calmly. "Look, I've got something really important to tell you."_

_Then he couldn't help bragging about his friends. "You know what? Tyler said he got 69,000 on Asteroids yesterday. But he pulled the plug!"_

_Elliot held up his hands for him to listen to him as he said, "Look, remember the goblin?"_

_"You're so lame, Elliot," he said with disappointment._

_"Come on, Michael," said Elliot as he looked at him seriously. "He came back."_

_This just has to be a joke, he thought. "He came back? He came back! Oh my God!" He pretended something was pulling his head out of the door._

_Elliot promptly caught onto him. "One thing!" he said as he continued to look at him seriously. "I have absolute power. Say it. Say it."_

_Now he was confused. He had never seen Elliot look so seriously before. He remembered how two nights ago Elliot had claimed there was something hiding inside the shed, and then the next day he had said he had encountered a creature in the middle of the night, hiding in the cornstalks._

_"What have you got? Is it the coyote?" he asked as Elliot led him into the room, closing the door behind them._

_"No," said Elliot. He led him to the center of the room. "Okay, now... swear it. The most excellent promise you can make. Swear as my only brother, on our lives..."_

_"Okay, don't get so heavy. I swear," he said quickly. What could Elliot possibly have that could be so important?_

_"Okay, now stand over there," he led him over near the closet, and turned him away from it. "And," he added, "you'd better take off your shoulder pads."_

_"What!" He was proud of his shoulder pads._

_"You might scare him," said Elliot. "And, close your eyes."_

_"Don't push it, Elliot," he said annoyed as he took off his shoulder pads._

_"I'm not coming out until your eyes are closed," Elliot said from inside the closet._

_"Okay, they're closed," he said as closed his tightly and groaned with frustration._

_A moment later, Elliot spoke again with calm seriousness. "Okay, swear it one more time. I have absolute..."_

_"You are absolute power! Yes!" he exclaimed in a Yoda imitation. Then he turned around..._

_He was stunned as he saw a creature he had never seen standing right beside Elliot. It was short and pudgy with very long arms and very short legs. It also had a flat head and a wrinkled face with huge blue eyes... and it was smiling at him._

_He just didn't know what to think._

Just as Michael ended his reverie, Mary re-entered the kitchen as she had left to get their mail. In one hand she held a few bills to be paid, and a letter in the other. Her face was very solemn.

"What is it, Mom?" asked Elliot, sensing what it could be.

Mary sighed as she held out the neatly folded letter. "It's from your father."

Elliot, Michael, and Gertie all became still and silent as E.T. just looked around at them as he couldn't understand the gravity of the situation.

Then Mary handed Elliot the letter,which he unfolded and began to read.

_Dear Elliot, I have moved on from Mexico now and have made a few friends, though I have not really decided whether to settle down yet. I hope you all are are alright as I miss you all. It is almost Christmas and it is very cold down here, which makes me miss you all the more. Now, I cannot promise, but I am hoping to be able to visit you for Christmas, if even at the last minute. I love you always. Dad._

Elliot had tears in his eyes as he finished reading the letter and slowly folded it up again. E.T. could sense his friend's emotions and he suddenly remembered one time from his last visit when he had been hiding in the closet that was filled with stuffed animals, and he spoken with them...

_"Elliot is nice and you can certainly trust him," said a large brown teddy bear beside of him. "He always took good care of me. I was a gift from his father when he was five years old."_

_"Where is he now?" asked E.T. curiously._

_"We're not sure," admitted a large blue elephant in front of him. _

_"He is no longer here,"sadly said a Raggedy Ann doll. "I was with Gertie when he left just a month ago. I can still feel her tears on me from that day."_

_"What was it that happened?" asked E.T. sympathetically._

_"If I remember right, it is called divorce," said a large yellow furred lion. "Whatever it's called, their Dad has moved out for good."_

_"But why?" asked E.T._

_"We're not quite sure of that, either," said a long-armed monkey. "But I used to belong to Elliot's big brother Michael, if you've met him, until he gave me to Elliot about five years ago, and I..."_

_However, it was just then that Mary entered the room. E.T. quickly stood completely still and silent with his big, blue eyes unfocused as he watched the tall woman gather some of the children's clothes for the laundry, and then calmly leave._

_E.T. breathed a small sigh of relief and looked again to his stuffed friends._

_"I miss Michael, though," said the monkey. "We used to have the greatest adventures."_

In the present time, E.T. tenderly laid one of his long arms onto his friend's shoulder.

After a moment of being silent, Mary suddenly brightened a little and said, "Well, now I hope you will enjoy your visit with us, my dear E.T."

E.T. smiled at the kindly woman. "I'm sure I will," he said. "This will be my first Christmas, so it will be my best."


	3. Chapter 3

That afternoon, Elliot took E.T. with him to get a Christmas tree. The two of them walked hand in hand to the local Christmas Tree Lot, where the smell of fresh pine filled the cold air around them.

"So, you see," Elliot said to his little companion. "Every year we find the perfect tree and decorate it in the living room where Santa Claus leaves the gifts and stuff."

E.T. was a botanist of his planet, and knew all about trees. As he approached a long row of evergreens, he began to converse with them.

"Hello! E.T. very pleased to meet you!" he began, speaking through telepathy. "Elliot say he need Christmas tree, would any of you mind if we chose you?"

"We all want to be Christmas trees! That was why we were all grown!" exclaimed the trees.

"Choose me!" exclaimed one very big and wide tree. "I have extra space and can hold many more ornaments!"

"Choose me!" exclaimed one very tall and proud tree with extended branches. "I come from a very long line of Christmas trees! There isn't a member of my family tree that wasn't one!"

"Choose me!" exclaimed one very green and lovely tree. "I am young and strong, and can last a long, long time!"

E.T. looked from one tree to the other, and couldn't decide. They all seemed like the perfect one, each in their own way. He put his hands to the sides of his head and shook it back and forth.

Then he suddenly spotted one tree which was smaller than the rest. It stood by itself, its branches weren't too short or too long, its green was light and shiny. As far as he, as an intergalactic botanist, could see, there was nothing wrong with it.

"Don't mind me," said the tree shyly. "It's one of the others you want, not me! I've already been rejected twice by a human customer!"

E. T's heart began to grow bright red within his chest, as he knew this was the right tree for him, and Elliot's family.

Elliot, who was standing close by, saw E. T's heart-light glow and knew it meant something.

"This one!" E.T. pointed his glowing fingertip at the chosen tree.

Elliot smiled. "Okay, E.T. If you think it's the perfect one, it is."

The owner of the lot was rather confused with Elliot's choice, though one look at E.T. and he didn't question it.

So Elliot soon had the tree tied onto the end of his bicycle, and with E.T. sitting comfortably in the basket with a sheet around him, he rode home and on the way they past by the park. Looking around, Elliot began to remember when he and E.T. had first met.

_It was late at night, and Elliot had been lying in his bed asleep when he was awakened abruptly by sudden noise coming from outside. He just knew there was something out there, even if no one would believe him._

_He put on his red jacket, without bothering to put on shoes, and taking his flashlight he stepped out of the back door and into the cool night air. He shined the flashlight around the shed but could find no signs of life. He walked farther away and into the garden in which his mother grew vegetables._

_All around him there was darkness except for the light of the moon which he noticed was a half crescent as he briefly glanced up at the cloudy sky. He shivered slightly, not entirely from the chill in the air. He began whistling lightly to himself to try to remain calm._

_He heard a sudden shuffling noise coming from within the cornstalks, and he approached them holding his flashlight in front of him, wondering what could possibly be hiding in them. He remembered how he used to hear about goblins that lived in the forest and came out only at night._

_"Elliot, you're crazy," he muttered to himself._

_He began searching through the tall cornstalks. He could find nothing hiding in them. Then he reached the end of them and shined his flashlight onto some nearby bushes, and down into a small clump of cornstalks and discovered a set of very strange looking footprints covering the ground that led into them._

_His breathing became heavier and his hands trembled slightly as he clutched the flashlight tightly in his left hand while he pulled away the cornstalks that were in front of him with his right, and then..._

_There was a very ugly looking creature with enormous eyes that were staring widely at him, and very long arms with very long fingers that were stretched out and waving frantically in front of him, and its mouth was open wide in a grimace as it made a very inhuman sort of noise._

_He was so terrified he dropped his flashlight and fell over backwards, screaming in horror. He glanced around in all directions quickly, and suddenly he saw the cornstalks rustling in the wind as if the goblin, or whatever had been in them, had just ran away._

_He quickly leapt to his feet and began chasing after the creature, but could see it nowhere. He stopped in front of a set of swings which were moving slowly as if something had just pushed them by. He looked straight ahead as he watched a few trashcans rolled down the hill. _

_The mysterious creature was gone and he stood there for a few moments in bewilderment before he finally went into the house again._

That was when he first saw E.T. It was amusing now, but it had been scary then.

Once they had arrived home, Elliot dragged the tree inside and Michael and their mother took hold of it and stood it up against the wall in the left corner of the living room. It looked quite beautiful there.

"It's a very nice tree," Mary said, smiling as she looked it over. "And it will look even nicer with all the decorations on."

"I'll go get them now!" Elliot exclaimed eagerly.

With E.T. following close behind him, Elliot climbed the steps leading up to the attic, in which all of their Christmas tree ornaments and other decorations were stored for the rest of the year long.

Once he had reached the topmost step, he reached out and took hold of E.T.'s long hand and gently pulled him up the the last few steps and set him down beside him on the attic's floor.

"It very dark up here," E.T. muttered as he glanced around the darkness that surrounded most of the attic.

"That's easily taken care of," Elliot said as he pressed his hand against the wall beside them and turned on the light that hung on the ceiling of the attic.

"That better," said E.T. as he glanced around the now softly lit attic. It was a fairly small room with boxes in nearly every place they looked. He also noticed that many of them were lightly covered in a white and fuzzy substance which he had never seen before.

Curiously, he rubbed his long fingers against the side of one of the boxes that were closest to him and then rubbed the fuzzy stuff between his fingers as he brought them close to his face.

"What is this strange stu - uhh- ahh..." The fuzzy substance seemed to be irritating his nose and he began rubbing it to try to make it go away but it seemed to only make it worse.

Fortunately, Elliot noticed his distress and quickly took a polka-dot handkerchief out of his back pocket and brought it to E.T.'s face, and he took hold of it and pressed it over his nose and mouth just in time to smother one big sneeze.

E.T. wiped his nose and then handed the handkerchief back to Elliot, though he wasn't sure if he should. But Elliot smiled as he took hold of it and tucked it into his pocket again.

"Sorry it's so dusty up here," Elliot said with an apologetic smile. "I didn't think of it."

Dust, that was what the fuzzy stuff was called? E.T. remembered that not everything on this planet agreed with him to well. He took another glance at the dust that was on the floor and thought of something. He lit his right fourth finger and tucked it into his whole right hand so that it also began to glow just a little. Then Elliot watched in wonder as he gently laid his hand down onto the dusty floor and then for just a moment the whole room, and all of the boxes in it, were aglow with a strange pinkish light, and then once the light had vanished, so did all of the dust with not one single speck of it remaining.

"Wow...!" Elliot whispered under his breath after a moment of stunned silence. Then he looked at his extra-terrestrial friend and smiled. Just as before, he never ceased to amaze him.

Then Elliot took hold of the large, cardboard box that was closest to them and opened it's flaps and began to show E.T. the things inside it.

"See, these are Christmas balls, we hang them on the tree." He held up two round glass balls by two tiny hooks. One was red and one was silver and they both had a bright shine that slightly reflected Elliot's face in them.

"Shiny," E.T. observed.

Elliot smiled and reached into the box again and took out a different set of ornaments from it.

"Look, see this is Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer," he said as he held up a little plastic reindeer with a shiny red nose.

"This is Frosty the Snowman," he held up a little plastic snowman with a top hat and a red scarf and round black eyes and a cute smiling face.

"This is the Nutcracker Prince," he held up a small wooden toy soldier by a string.

E.T. smiled with interest, and Elliot reached deep into the box again and took out a a medium-sized snow-globe with a Santa Claus inside, holding a large sack, beside of a tall Christmas tree in front of a window, next to a lamppost.

"Look! You see, this is a snow globe!" Elliot said excitedly.

E.T. stared at it curiously as he extended his neck a few inches. "Um...uh... h-how does it work?" he muttered.

Elliot smiled. "Like this, you just hold it tightly, and give it a little shake... and now the snow is flying all around!"

E.T. giggled with delight. "E.T. love snow globe!" he exclaimed as he held it within his long and graceful fingers.

"And, you see this is Santa Claus," said Elliot as he pointed out the painted figure in the snow globe that was of a man with a long white beard and a round belly, and dressed in bright red costume, and his chubby face was kindly and rosy-cheeked. "He is the guy that comes down our chimney on Christmas eve and puts the presents under the tree. He lives at the North Pole, and he has elves that make the toys in workshops and he has a sleigh that is pulled by eight reindeer, and faster than anything so that he can visit all of the houses with children in the world in just one day."

E.T. listened to all of this with intense interest. "How does Elliot know all of this?" he wondered aloud.

"My dad told me all about him when I was a little kid, younger than Gertie," Elliot explained, and at first he was smiling and then his expression became more somber as he recalled a time when he had first learned about Santa Claus...

_It was the Christmas eve of when Elliot was three years old, and he was laying in his father's lap as they sat beside the fireplace. Elliot was thinking about a few things that were concerning him right now._

_"Why does Santa Claus live at the North Pole?"_

_"Because he is happy there, and he wants to stay in a place that is safe from the rest of the world. He wants no one to spy on him, or find out his deepest secrets," his father had replied, stroking his hair tenderly._

_"So, no one ever sees him?"_

_"That is not quite true. He has his own special ways of traveling, and sometimes in disguise, so only certain who deserve to see him can."_

_After a moment of silence, Elliot spoke again. "Are you sure Santa will come tonight?"_

_"Of course I am," his father assured him as he held close._

_"But how does he know where we live, and how does he know what I want when I can't write to him?" he asked slightly worriedly._

_"He has his own special ways of knowing about those things as well," his father kindly assured him again. "The wishes of children everywhere will always reach him in some way, whether through the mail, or on the wind from their hearts, and wherever there is a house in which he is welcome it will be found by his magic sleigh."_

_Elliot smiled, and then he thought of something else. "Santa gives presents to everyone, but does he ever get any himself?"_

_"Of course he does. You see, he brings joy and happiness to all in the world and so he receives love and respect from the world in return. Remember, Elliot, there are many different kinds of presents to give, and the best kind of all is the gift of love."_

_Elliot smiled and closed his eyes sleepily as his father kissed his forehead._

Elliot now sighed as the memory came to its end. That was seven years ago and he could remember it as if it were from yesterday. It was also from a time when he believed that his parents would always be together and his father would always be right where he has needed most; and now it was all he could do to hope for him to be able to come visit them this Christmas.

Then all of a sudden he felt a strangely tender touch to his face. He blinked and turned his head slightly to see E.T. right beside him as he was very gently wiping away a stray tear from his cheek and his face held a sympathetic smile, just like he understood exactly what he was feeling right now from his memories.

Elliot smiled at his otherworldly best friend as he felt that he was just grateful to be able to spend Christmas with him at least. After all, without him he would have been completely lost.

He reached his hand into the box beside him again and felt something big and pointy inside. He smiled as he took hold of it and pulled it out from the very bottom of the box.

"Look! This is the Christmas Star for the top of the tree!" he said cheerfully as he showed it to E.T.

E.T. smiled as he took hold of the star and felt that it was made of some kind of plastic. "Why made of this?" he asked curiously.

Elliot smiled and said, "So that the light inside of it will be able to shine through it when it's plugged in."

"Plugged in?" E.T. looked very confused.

Elliot chuckled as he said, "You'll see soon. Come on."

They gathered a few of the boxes in their arms and left the attic. They brought the boxes into the living room and sat them close to the tree.

Then everyone began to decorate the tree. Elliot showed E.T. how to put on the silver tinsel,and then they began to put the red and white candy canes on. At one point, E.T. took a small lick of one just to find out how it tastes, and it slightly burned the tip of his tongue with a rather unpleasant kind of taste.

They began to put the ornaments on next, there were many different kinds of them and once E.T. found one which was blue with tiny yellow balls encircling around it and it's top ended in a small point. His big blue eyes opened wide as his mouth spread into a smile of surprise and delight.

"Spaceship!" he exclaimed, and thus got everyone's attention.

Elliot smiled as he took hold of it. "It really does look like it!" he said with a chuckle.

"The guy that made it must have seen your spaceship, and remembered!" Gertie exclaimed with delight.

"That is so cool!" Michael added.

E.T. smiled and then reached his fingers upward as high as they could go, and proudly placed the ornament that looked like a spaceship onto a branch near the top of the tree where it could stand out above the rest.

Then everyone put the colorful electric Christmas lights around the tree, and once they almost became tangled around E.T.'s long neck.

Then, when the tree was fully decorated, E.T. took hold of the Christmas Star, which he had instantly f fallen in love with, and Michael picked him up, quite easily, and E.T. places the star onto the very top of the tree with loving care.

Michael tenderly set E.T. down onto the floor again, and Mary found the cord that was connected to the lights of the tree and plugged it into the outlet.

"Here we go," she said eagerly.

Everyone waited for the lights to turn on, and yet they did not.

"The lights seem to be broken," Mary said sadly.

Michael, Elliot, and Gertie moaned with disappointment. E.T. seeing this quickly came up with a very bright idea. He waddled over to the outlet which the lights were plugged into, and very carefully unplugged the cord and replaced it with his long finger which he had lit, and then in a second all of the lights around the tree and also the star on top of it lit with a very colorful brilliance.

Everyone in the room was soon smiling with surprise, delight, and relief. The Christmas Tree had never looked as beautiful as it did right now. E.T. noticing their happiness smiled and the light inside his heart began to also glow a loving bright red.


	4. Chapter 4

E.T. waddled down the sidewalk with Elliot leading him along by his left hand and Gertie by his right one. They were now headed towards what they called a Mall, which E.T. had never heard of, although the name did remind of some other distant planet he and his companions had visited once long ago. He was wearing a bright red hooded jacket which Elliot had loaned him, and a pair of dark blue boots which Gertie had loaned him, and a pair of thick long-fingered green gloves which Michael had loaned him. Over his big blue eyes he wore a pair of big sunglasses with dark lenses.

As they walked along he looked out of the corners of his big sunglasses and noticed all the things and creatures along their way, and he couldn't help noticing how different everything looked from his previous visit to Earth. There were streams of rainbow colored lights glowing around nearly every building they passed by. He also noticed many decorated trees, which were mostly set in corners. He saw signs pasted onto windows and doors of some buildings. He could barely read them, though he could decipher the words "Buy one, get one free!" and "Happy Holidays!"

He once noticed a figure standing in front of a store which looked a lot like the Santa Claus whom Elliot had told him about, he was dressed in red and white with a long curly beard and he was ringing a bell as he was saying "Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas!" He smiled as he saw him. Then a minute later he saw another Santa Claus figure standing on a corner with a golden pot in his hands!

"Here we are, E.T.," said Elliot when at last they reached their destination. The Mall was the largest building he had ever seen. As they entered he noticed so many new things.

Firstly, he noticed the many human beings of this native planet, They were all so different from one another, unlike on his own planet. They varied in all shapes and sizes, and some had hair on their faces, and some just on their heads, and a few had none at all. Some also had different skin colors ranging from light, dark, and very dark. Most were tall and straight, while others were built more like he was with their bellies bulging out. While most were two or three times taller than he was, he also noticed a few tiny ones here and there which were being carried on the shoulders of the tall ones, he easily figured out these must be what those on his planet called the saplings.

He truly had never seen humans like this before. It was like looking at them in a completely new perspective. He remembered very well when he had first heard about humans from his Captain. He was a young student at the time, and he was learning about space travel, and how to collect plant samples from foreign planets.

_"Our next mission is on planet Earth," said their Captain. "Now remember, we'll all stay close together but if some kind of emergency occurs, or if one of you should lose your way, give out the internal signal from the light of the heart." Here they all turned their heart-lights on. "Also if you are ever in trouble call out the distress call," here he demonstrated the call._

_They all listened carefully to the Captain's speech, especially E.T.._

_"Now, are there any questions?" the Captain asked._

_E.T. promptly lit his finger for attention and spoke the first of many questions he had. "Is it true Earth is called the Blue Planet for it's oceans?"_

_"It's true," said the Captain. "Earth is the bluest planet in its galaxy, next to Neptune, of course."_

_"Is it also true the creatures on the Earth, known as human beings, are the only beings in the Universe who have no knowledge of space travel, or of other universal life?" asked E.T._

_"I'm afraid it is true," replied the Captain._

_"But why?" E.T. asked very curiously. "Why are they so ignorant?"_

_The Captain sighed as he lowered his neck. "I don't really know. But I suppose it is because they are so absorbed with themselves and obsessed with their own superstitious ways of living they never even bothered to learn about the treasures of the universe or even of their own planet."_

_"How awful!" exclaimed E.T. "Why can't we just meet with them and try teaching them what they ought to know now?"_

_"I really wish we could, I really do," admitted the Captain sadly. "However I'm sure it is for the best we never come in contact with any human beings, at least for a very long time."_

_"But why?" E.T. asked very confused._

_"Well," the Captain began slowly. "They are, as I've said before, not the most universally refined species, and they have also been very slow in evolving. You see, I myself first encountered them twenty million years ago and at the time they looked a little like us, they had long arms and flat faces though they also had a lot of dark hair on their bodies except for their faces, hands, and feet. Then about ten million years ago I was visiting Earth again and saw they had changed a great deal, they were taller and straighter with less hair and had acquired a protruding nose, and they wrapped themselves in the furs of the animals they killed for food. Then I remember when only a millennium ago I was passing over the Earth on one of my first missions as a Captain and I saw them battling one another, there was war going on nearly everywhere on the planet I could see and I remember thinking to myself 'these must be the most vicious creatures there are in the universe'. I had noticed how much their appearance, ways of living and clothing themselves had changed, though I wasn't sure if it was a good thing at all for they didn't seem much more evolved in their brains and consciousness than when they were mere animals. Now they are gradually becoming more civilized towards one another, but alas they are ruining the beautiful planet they live on by deconstructing whole forests and species of plants, animals, and polluting the very air they breath with gases, toxins, and other poisonous substances which harm their atmosphere which is now almost lethal to our health if we stay there for a long amount of time I am afraid."_

_E.T. and his companions listened to the Captain's speech with wide eyes and their mouths slightly opened in shock. For a moment all were silent, and then E.T. asked hesitantly, "Are... Are they all doomed to destruction?"_

_"I don't know," admitted the Captain candidly. "I just hope they will someday be able to evolve to a higher understanding of themselves, their world, and the universe. Then maybe we will all be able to properly meet with them. Right now our main concern is for their plant life which we will collect samples of from the rainforests on our first mission."_

His Captain may have been quite right about everything he had said to them, and now E.T. had new information for them about the human race. The children were far more able to care for outsiders than the bigger ones, and with his adventure on Earth with Elliot and his family he felt more confident of the Earth's population evolving to a higher intelligence and understanding of the universe.

He remembered the words of his Captain when he had related to everyone about his experiences, _"My young friend, you shall someday go down in history for I have never met anyone more worthy of leadership."_

His memories were suddenly halted when his human companions stopped in front of a display of Christmas wreaths and Michael announced, "Alright, we'll all go our separate ways now and we'll meet back here at the end of the day."

Then he watched Michael and Gertie head into a different area as he followed Elliot into another.

They went into a room with a large disc positioned on the top of the doorway. Once inside, E.T. saw hundreds upon hundreds of shiny discs in shiny cases on dozens of shelves everywhere. He could also hear a mysterious string of music coming from somewhere...

_Welcome to my Christmas song  
I'd like to thank you for the year  
So I'm sending you this Christmas card  
To say it's nice to have you here  
I'd like to sing about all the things  
Your eyes and mind can see  
So hop aboard the turntable  
Step into Christmas with me_

As E.T. looked around, wondering where it was coming from, a man in pressed suit standing behind a counter spoke to Elliot.

"Hello, young man, and merry Christmas. May I help you find anything?"

"No thanks," replied Elliot. "I'll just look around."

"Is the little fellow there your brother?" the man inquired, looking at E.T.

"Well, yes of course he is," said Elliot.

E.T. followed the sound of the music which became clearer as he went into the center of the room.

_Step into Christmas  
Let's join together  
We can watch the snow fall forever and ever  
Eat, drink, and be merry  
Come along with me  
Step into Christmas  
The admission's free_

He approached the source of the music, which was a small clearing in the center where a large red metal box with white stripes down the side and a green ribbon at the top was positioned on a turntable, and the music he could see was coming out of a patch of tiny holes in the side of the box.

_Take care in all you do next year  
And keep smiling through the days  
If we can help to entertain you  
We will find the ways  
So merry Christmas one and all  
There's no place I'd rather be  
Than asking you if you'd oblige  
Stepping into Christmas with me._

The song ended and E.T. was awestruck and very curious as a new one began.

_Try to Imagine, a house that isn't a home  
Try to imagine, a Christmas all alone  
That's where I'll be  
Since you left me  
My tears could melt the snow  
What can I do, without you  
I've got no place, no place to go._

This new song was much more melancholy than the first one, and it gave E.T. a sudden mysterious wave of loneliness, like the way he felt when he watched his spaceship fly away and leave him behind on Earth and the light of his heart went out instantly. But he also knew he shouldn't feel this way now, for he was with Elliot and his siblings and they were like a second family to him, and also he knew his companions would return to Earth for him in a few days after he spent this holiday here with Elliot.

_It'll be lonely this Christmas  
Without you to hold  
It'll be lonely this Christmas  
Lonely and cold  
It'll be cold, so cold  
Without you to hold  
This Christmas_

The lonely song continued though E.T. couldn't bear to listen to it. He wanted intensely to turn it off, or to change it, so he lit his right forefinger and aimed it at the air holes in the metal box. Then there was a tiny click as the sad song vanished and a new one began.

_Hark the Herald Angels sing  
Glory to the newborn King  
Peace on Earth and mercy mild  
God and sinners reconciled_

E.T. listened to the first verse of this new song and felt deeply disgusted for it reminded him of the old myths of the universe being ruled over by a god who would reward, punish, and pawn the cosmos as he pleased. Of course his home planet hadn't believed in it for billions and billions of years, but unfortunately the Earthly beings of this planet still held onto the myth out of stubborn pride and foolish fear. When would they learn! The universe had no governing behind it, how could it? It was all a random process of mixed cosmos which just came and went with no regard whatsoever to the meager little beings inhabiting the planets of either his or this one.

Promptly, he re-lit his finger and zapped the frustrating song off and a new one instantly came on.

_I don't want a lot for Christmas  
There's just one thing I need  
I don't care about the presents  
Underneath the Christmas tree  
I just want you for my own  
More than you could ever know  
Make my wish come true  
All I want for Christmas is  
YOU!_

While this song was considerably better than the last one, it wasn't much more bearable to listen to because of the unreasonably high pitches put into the lyrics which wrecked havoc on E.T.'s delicate eardrums. Trembling, he reached out his lit fingertip again and zapped onto another song.

_People making lists, buying special gifts,  
Taking time to be kind to one and all  
It's the time of year when good friends are here  
And you wish you could give more  
Than just presents from a store _

_Why don't you give love on Christmas day  
Even the man who has everything  
Would be so happy if you would bring  
Him love on Christmas day  
No greater gift is there than love_

This song had a very enticing feel to it and E.T. loved it for it reminded him of why he had come to Earth again to spend Christmas with Elliot and his family. His heart light glowed a bright red as he tapped his wobbly little feet to the music.

_People you don't know smile and nod hello  
Everywhere there's an air of Christmas joy  
It's that once a year, when the world's sincere  
And you'd like to find a way  
To show the things that words can't say _

_Why don't you give love on Christmas day  
The man on the street and the couple upstairs  
All need to know there's someone who cares  
Give love on Christmas day  
No greater gift is there than love  
What the world needs is love  
Yes, the world needs your love_

_Why don't you give love on Christmas day  
Every little child on Santa's knee  
Has room for your love underneath his tree  
Give love on Christmas day  
No greater gift is there than love  
What the world needs is love  
Yes, the world needs your love_

_Give love on Christmas day..._

The song ended and E.T. was left smiling with his heart-light glowing bright and filling his body with warmth. However, he was completely unprepared for the song which came on just then.

_Last Christmas, I gave you my heart  
But the very next day, you gave it away  
This year, to save me from tears  
I'll give it to someone special! _

This song was so loud it seemed to knock E.T. out with a big WHAM! He fell over backwards and his right arm shot into the air and as he zapped off the explosive song he accidentally knocked over a small tower of CDs which were stacked right beside him with a loud clang.

"Ooh... Ouch..." he moaned as he lay fallen on the floor with a dozen shiny cases containing CDs laying scattered around him.

He listened as a gentle song about walking in a winter wonderland began playing, and suddenly his right forefinger connected with a CD case which was right beside of it and his fingertip began to glow again. He slowly sat up again as he picked up the CD case and smiled as he somehow seemed to be dissecting all of the music contained on the little disc.

Carrying the CD with him, he waddled out of the music store as he felt overwhelmed at discovering how amazing the variety of Earthly music was.

* * *

As Michael entered into the boys section of the clothing store in the mall he met with Greg, Steve, and Tyler, his three good buddies who had been with him when they outran the government agents to rescue E.T. and take him to his spaceship in time.

"Hey fellas! How's it going'!" he greeted as they all gave each other their high fives.

"It's going' great, Mike," said Tyler. "I was just wanting to invite you to the Christmas party at my house on Friday."

"What kind of party is it gonna be?" asked Michael.

"We'll all eat Christmas goodies, and play Christmas Monopoly and Dungeons and Dragons, and tell stories, and dance to the latest Christmas rap; and you don't have to take a date really by the way, and we'll also exchange cards and a few gifts."

Michael smiled broadly. "Hey that sounds like a lot of fun. Sure, I'd love to come, guys."

"Great!" said Steve happily. "Remember the party starts at seven and it lasts until eleven."

"Alright guys, and I hope then you'll also be able to see the little squashy guy at my house," said Michael with a grin.

All three of them looked stunned suddenly. "You mean... He's come back?" Greg said with his mouth agape.

"Yep, he has, to spend Christmas with the family," Michael said proudly. He knew they would remember E.T., for the little alien had changed all of their lives for the better. "I'm also hoping I'll see my dad again on Christmas day," he added softly.

"I hope you will," said Steve kindly. "I remember how hard it was on you when your parents divorced. Of course I don't really know what it's like as mine have been divorced since I was two years old."

Michael nodded understandingly. "Yep... Well, merry Christmas guys. See you at the party," he tried to smile again.

"Merry Christmas to you Mike," said Greg as he gave him a pat on his shoulder and the four of them went in separate directions.

Later as Michael was coming out of the clothing store and heading into another department, he stopped suddenly as a certain someone caught his eye.

There, standing about ten feet away from him was Hailey O'Rourke. She was a tall and skinny girl of fifteen years and had long reddish blonde hair and green eyes. She also had borderline autism which isolated her at times from other girls, and boys. She was very different from a lot of people, and that was the reason why Michael liked her.

He thought she looked a bit lonely, and so he walked up to her and smiled as he greeted "Hello Hailey. Remember me? I'm Michael Taylor." Hailey smiled shyly in response.

"Can I help you find anything?" asked Michael politely.

"No thanks," said Hailey. "I'm just browsing around."

"Well, would you like to go with me to the Christmas party at Tyler's this Friday?" he asked slightly nervously.

Hailey seemed suddenly melancholy. "I... I don't know."

"It'll be alright," he assured her. "You don't have to talk to anybody there, just have fun, and I'll be right there with you and I'll make sure no one lays a hand on you."

Hailey smiled warmly and said "Okay then I'd love to come."

Michael smiled broadly in a way which said this meant a lot to him. Hailey smiled also, and after hesitating a few moments she quietly asked Michael, "May I ask you something kinda weird?"

"Okay?" Michael said, somewhat confused.

Hailey leaned close to him and muttered, "I sometimes feel like there are other beings out there watching us."

Michael smiled as if he understood. "I know what you mean," he said. "So do I, more than you'll ever know."

* * *

E.T. waddled his way into the department which was filled to the brim with toys. He had learned about toys who lived in homes on his last visit, he didn't know about department store toys, yet.

As he was looking around, trying to decide which ones he would like to speak to first, he suddenly felt himself being picked up by a pair of strong arms and set onto a shelf lined with a series of individual figures who looked a lot like him with big sunglasses, red jackets, boots, and gloves, the only difference was the noticeably more human head behind the sunglasses. He easily figured out he had been set onto this shelf because he had been mistaken for one of these figures.

"Hello," he said telepathically to the one nearest to him. "I'm E.T. from the Green Planet. Where are you from?"

"I was made in Japan, as were many of us here," he said. "My name is Elmer, and these are my brothers, Murray, Freddy, Gary, Teddy, and Jack. We are called the Hyper-Ski Lift Brothers."

"Hmm... Why are you called Hyper-Ski Lift Brothers?" asked E.T. curiously.

"Because we have a special battery in us which programs us to hyper ski whenever we com in contact with snow, which is why we have on these plastic skies," said Elmer.

"We hope to be bought soon, before Christmas comes," said Murray.

"We wish to be with the children who want to play with us, for then we will be able to do what were were built and programed to do which will give our lives meaning," said Freddy.

"Many of our other brothers have already been bought and sold," said Gary. "We miss them."

"I know just how you feel," said E.T. sympathetically.

"Toys and dolls are always arriving and leaving all the time," said a new voice.

E.T. concentrated his telepathic energy towards the source of the voice and focused on a shelf a few feet away which was lined with a series of green plush frogs with masks tied over their faces in red, orange, blue, and purple cloth which was also tied around their arms and legs.

"Hello," said E.T. to them. "What are you called, and how long have you been here?"

"We are called the Fantastic Fearless Warrior Frog Foursome, and we've been here for over a month now," said the first of them. "We were told at the factory where we were made we were based on characters in a movie which is named after us, though we haven't seen it yet, and it just came out last week."

"I just hope we're good guys," said the frog beside the first one, "and we teach the kids who will own us soon good moral values, and about playing fair."

"As far as we go," said a different voice, "we just like to be loved and cuddled."

E.T. turned his attention toward the direction of the new voice and he saw on a shelf just across from him a row of small round furry creatures with pointed ears, tiny beaks, fluffy tails, and large eyes.

"We are the Furbies," it said. "Me Coco."

"Me Tyloo," said another with white and black spotted fur.

"Me Tytyle," said another one with brown and white fur.

"Me Gnola," said another one with pink and yellow fur.

"Hello," said E.T.. He liked the Furbies, they reminded him of creatures on a planet he had visited long ago.

"We just go for love and nurturing," said the bright blue Furby named Coco. "So we hope to be adopted by girls."

"So do we," said a very soft and feminine voice which belonged to a doll with long blonde hair in a box with Barbie written on it. "My name is Barbie, and so are all the others on this shelf," she said. "We were all made especially for girls, to teach them how to like who they are and feel confident to be girls."

"Sometimes we also teach them about love," said another Barbie doll with long brown hair. "I just hope when someone buys me they will also buy my Ken, I couldn't survive without him."

"I don't mean to brag," said a metallic voice from across the shelf, "but I can teach girls and boys so much more. In fact, they won't have much need for school once they have one of me in their position. You see, I am the smartest toy robot in the world, and also the funniest for I have over two-hundred-thousand jokes stored in my memory bank."

E.T. was just about to ask the toy robot more questions, when suddenly he heard a very, very well known voice enter his energy wave.

"E.T.! Here you are! I've been looking everywhere for you!" exclaimed Elliot as he stood up onto a small stool nearby and picked him up from the shelf he had been set onto a while ago.

E.T. was very glad Elliot had come for him, though he was also sorry to leave the toys for he was learning so much as he was talking with them.

* * *

Gertie stood in line, waiting for her turn to sit on Santa's lap. As she came closer and closer to the moment she grew more and more excited to tell him what she wanted for Christmas, and then suddenly she thought of something else... What would E.T. want for Christmas? How could she give E.T. the right gift for Christmas which would show him how much he meant to her? If she could think of something, could Santa possibly deliver it? How did he make so many deliveries in one night anyway? She was so preoccupied with these questions she hardly noticed when it was suddenly it her turn.

"Ho ho ho!" Santa chuckled merrily. "Come on up here little one!"

Gertie smiled and blushed as she stepped up and sat down on Santa's right knee.

"Now tell me, what do you want for Christmas?" he asked gently.

"I want a Strawberry Shortcake doll, and a paper-flower-maker," she said, and then she leaned into him as close as she could and whispered into his ear, "What would the Man in the Moon like to have for Christmas?"

Santa looked surprised for a moment and then he began to laugh again. "Ho ho ho! Why, I'd think he'd want to come down to Earth to celebrate Christmas!" he chortled.

Then he slowly stopped laughing as Gertie looked at him very seriously. "I really mean it," she said. "What would he like? What could I give him?" She looked at him inquisitively. "How do you give away so many gifts all in one night? How do they all fit in your sack? How can you carry it with you on your sleigh?"

Gertie smiled and nodded. "Thanks for the secret," she said.

Then the elf dressed employee at the front of the line set the camera for the picture to be taken. Gertie looked straight ahead and smiled.

It was just then Elliot came in line while holding E.T.'s hand. E.T. extended his neck so the hood of his jacket fell from his head, and he removed his sunglasses to see clearer, and so he got a good view of Santa as he held Gertie on his lap.

"Santa!" E.T. called out.

"Wha!?" Santa looked in the direction of E.T. and caught the sight of the benign alien face which was smiling so big.

Then there was a audible click as the picture was taken.

* * *

**"Step into Christmas" - Elton John**

**"Lonely This Christmas" - MUD**

**"All I Want For Christmas Is You" - Mariah Carey**

**"Give Love on Christmas Day" - Solid Harmonie**

**"Last Christmas" - WHAM!**


	5. Chapter 5

"So," said E.T. to the piece of mistletoe he had found after learning about its history. "You are not poisonous though a lot of people are found to be allergic to your berries."

"It is true," it replied as he held it in-between his long fingers. "Yet me and my other relatives still find ourselves inside the homes of human beings at this time of year."

"Why?" asked a puzzled E.T.

"I am considered a source of good luck in Romanian traditions, and, although no one in this part of the world really knows yet, I can effectively treat an illness called cancer."

E.T. truly was amazed at how ignorant these humans were of the treasures their plants held within them.

"Though I am primarily brought into homes because of a Christmas tradition of two people kissing underneath me. They believe my tell of bringing good fortune will rub off onto them as love."

E.T. could vaguely remember some time during his last visit to Earth when he had seen a human man hold a woman in his arms as they're mouths became interlocked with each others, was it called kissing... was it called love? E.T. thought he knew what love was for he was sure it was exactly what he felt whenever he thought of Elliot and his family. When Michael had once rubbed his head tenderly he had felt a wonderful surge of positive energy flow through him, was that what connecting was like?

As Gertie came into the living room she held a notepad in her right hand as she went over her list of what she thought E.T. might like for Christmas: shoes, a bath, a pet monkey, thermal heated underwear, a cell phone, a pony, a basketball, a strawberry shortcake.

She was really having difficulty trying to think of something. She looked up and noticed E.T. was looking at the mistletoe attached to the window, and she smiled as she suddenly had a bright idea.

E.T. was standing perfectly still, and then he suddenly felt the warming sensation of his heart-light turning on as Gertie kissed him lovingly on his right cheek.

"Ooh... Thank you for make E.T. happy," he murmured as he turned and smiled along with Gertie.

Gertie giggled for a moment, and then she said "Come on, E.T., let's make some Christmas cookies.

E.T. followed to Gertie into the kitchen, where he stood onto a stool next to her as she put on an apron, which was white with green stripes and red dots.

"Okay, E.T. The only way to make cookies is the traditional way," Gertie began. "Three and a half cups of flour, one teaspoon of baking powder, One half teaspoon of salt, one cup of margarine, one and a half cups of sugar, two eggs, and two teaspoons of vanilla," she directed, indicating all ingredients, which were set before them.

E.T. listened as he took in the sight of everything laid out, and began to concentrate on his magic.

Before Gertie's wide eyes, all the things on the table began to levitate, then they began to act out Gertie's instructions, all on their own, to the rhythm of "Jingle Bells"!

The cups dipped themselves into the sacks of flour and sugar, the teaspoons dipped themselves into vanilla, baking powder, and salt. The eggs even cracked themselves up to the tune!

"Jingle bells! Jingle bells! Jingle all the way!" Gertie began to sing the tune as the ingredients poured themselves into the large bowl, and the wooden spoons began mixing them, by themselves.

When everything was quite mixed together, Gertie explained to E.T. how they would now need to cover the dough and let it chill for two hours.

So while they waited, E.T. and Gertie went into the living room where Elliot, Michael, and Mary were busily decorating the tree.

Once this had been done, E.T. and Gertie returned to the kitchen, where Gertie found a rolling pin, and clean baking sheet.

Gertie took mounds of dough out from the bowl. E.T. levitated the rolling pin, then it began to roll on its own over the dough until it was flat as could be.

Gertie found the cookie cutters, which were in the shapes of a snowflake, Santa Claus, elf, reindeer, Christmas tree, star, and candy cane. There was a new addition, an E.T.!

After they had cut as many as they could, they placed the tray full of them into a preheated oven. After eight minutes, the cookies were done.

Gertie found the icing and the sprinkles, and they began to decorate them. E.T. levitated the icing very carefully as he began to spread it thinly onto the cookies.

Mary stood in the kitchen doorway and smiled. "Well," she stated, "for once I am glad to be able to see the cookies without the additional mess."

Then as the sprinkles were sprinkled on, Elliot, Michael, and the dog Harvey, came in and everyone took their share of the cookies. Then they all went into the living room and gathered around the television set.

Once they were in there and E.T. saw the big strange box he remembered from his last visit and now he was able to ask the question he wanted to before. "What is that big and strange box?"

"It's a TV," said Elliot. "We watch things on it."

"It's really a mechanical box of wires and cables which are connected with a satellite which sends air waves through the transmission cables and the box receives them in the form of pictures with sounds and reproduces them to fit the size of the TV," said Michael.

"Ah... I see," said E.T. lowering his neck from the screen. He remembered, somewhat vaguely, the images he had seen on the box when he had first turned it on. He had seen the image of a cat with its tail on fire which had rather upset him, then he had seen the image of a spaceship, one not like his own but one which looked like the kind Cealans used; and then he had seen a man take a woman into his arms and connect his lips with hers which was one of the most fascinating things he had seen in observing humans, and then shortly afterward he had seen how humans use their devices called phones to reach out to each other and he had been inspired to build his own transmitter to reach his companions.

"Now we'll see what kind of Christmas specials are on the air waves," Michael continued as he took hold of a small rectangular object with many button on it, and pressing onto one of them.

E.T. blinked and lifted his head as a new series of images and sounds appeared suddenly onto the box.

"_Well, young lady, what's your name?"_

"_Susan Walker. What's yours?"_

"_Mine? Kris Kringle. I'm Santa Claus. Oh, you don't believe that, do you?"_

"_My mother is Mrs. Walker, the lady who hired you."_

"_Oh."_

"_But I must say, you're the best one I've seen."_

"_Really?"_

"_Your beard doesn't have those things over your ears."_

"_That's because it's real, like I'm really Santa Claus. Go ahead, pull it. Ouch!"_

"Aw, I've already seen _Miracle on 34__th__ Street_!" said Elliot.

Michael clicked the remote again to another station and a new show came on.

"_Why'd you want to save me?"_

"_That's what I was sent down for. I'm your guardian angel."_

"_I wouldn't be a bit surprised."_

"_Ridiculous of you to think of killing yourself for money."_

"_Eight thousand dollars."_

"_Yeah, I'll say. Just things like that."_

"_Now, how do you know that?"_

"_I told you. I'm your guardian angel. I know everything about you."_

"_Well, you look about like the kind of an angel I'd get. Sort of a fallen angel, aren't you? What happened to your wings?"_

"_I haven't won my wings yet. That's why I'm an angel second class."_

"_I don't know whether I like it very much being seen around with an angel without any wings."_

As Elliot, Michael, and Gertie began to laugh, E.T. studied the TV and remembered how he had been able to change the music on the stereo in the mall by aiming his forefinger at it when it lit. He wondered if he could the same right here now.

He aimed his glowing fingertip directly at the screen and it instantly changed to a different station and a different show.

"_It's a dream! That's what it was! A dream!"_

"_It's not a dream, Ebeneezer."_

"_For pity's sake, Marley, leave me in peace!"_

"_It was for pity's sake I came here! Pity for you! I leave you, with just the tiniest chance of escaping my fate."_

"_You were always a good friend to me, Jacob, thank ye."_

"_You will be visited by three ghosts."_

"_I... I think I'd rather not."_

"_The first will appear tonight when the bell tolls one."_

"_Couldn't I take them all at once and get it over with, Jacob?"_

"_The second at two o'clock and the third when the bell tolls three. I must go now."_

"_Marley wait!" _

"_I'm doomed to wander through the world in everlasting repentance. Remember what has passed between us. Farewell, Scrooge!"_

Not finding special interest in this one, E.T. aimed his glowing fingertip at the TV screen again and it at once changed to another station.

Suddenly, Elliot took hold of the remote and exclaimed, "Hey, I bet I know what Christmas movie E.T. would enjoy watching!"

He tuned the set into channel 4 which was just now airing a Christmas movie called _Santa Claus Conquers the Martians_.

From the beginning onward E.T. was captivated by the story in the film which was about the residents of Mars, the neighboring planet to Earth, kidnapping Santa Claus from the North Pole so their Martian children could be as happy as the ones of Earth, and also kidnapping a human boy and girl in the process. Then everything turned out all right in the end with Santa Claus teaching the Martians how to acquire their own ways of Christmas and the Earthly Santa and the two children returning to their home planet.

Once the movie had ended, Elliot, Michael, and Gertie went off to bed and E.T. followed after them. Because his feet were so small he waddled slowly and stiffly and he was halfway to Elliot's room when he heard the sound of a phone ringing. He had seen but never heard a telephone before, and so his curiosity overcame him and he crept quietly into the living room.

He stayed hidden in the shadows as he watched Mary take the ringing phone off of its cradle. She held it next to her ear and muttered "Hello?"

E.T.'s ears were not easy to see but they were very good at hearing even the faintest of sounds and voices, and so he heard the voice of the man who was on the other end of the line quite clearly.

"Hello, Mary..." he said. "I wish I had something better to say to you at this time... but I'm afraid I might not be able to see you on Christmas day after all..."


	6. Chapter 6

The next morning E.T. felt he hadn't been able to sleep very much during last night for he had been so distraught over the melancholy conversation between Mary and Elliot's dad he had overheated his telekinetic aura in trying to find out why he couldn't come on Christmas day, and all he had been able to cipher was images of the man and woman being locked to each others lips he had seen on the television screen and various other fascinating and somewhat disturbing images.

E.T. felt very confused. He truly didn't understand why Elliot's dad couldn't come to see him on Christmas day. Did his dad not love him? E.T. loved Elliot and that was why he had come back to Earth to visit him for Christmas. But why would Elliot's parent – one of his parents, choose not to live with him. E.T. had left because he was more needed on his home planet than here, but he couldn't imagine a parent not being needed more than at home with their children. While humans may not yet know the secrets of the universe there was still so much he didn't know about them.

With these questions weighing heavy on his mind he turned to Elliot while he was dressing and addressed him with the topic.

"Elliot... did your dad love you?" he asked.

"I thought he did," said Elliot. "He did say he loved me, and Mom, and Mike, and Gertie."

"Then why did he leave you here while he went away? E.T. does not understand."

Elliot tucked his sweater in very slowly as he replied. "He left us for Sally, he met her on a business trip and I guess he just decided he liked her more than Mom."

"But why?" asked E.T., still not understanding.

"I... I don't know, E.T., I really don't. You'll have to ask Mom," Elliot said rashly

E.T. sensed he'd caused Elliot distress and said, "E.T. is sorry."

Mary woke up groggily after a very uncomfortable sleep, of course it seemed every night had been uncomfortable since the first one without him laying beside her. His call last night could not have come at a more inopportune time and now she didn't know when, how, or if she should tell the kids they wouldn't see their dad on Christmas day. Of course she might have known he couldn't be relied upon as he had proven to them before, and once again it was about Sally, he'd said things weren't going to well with her now and for all she cared Sally could just jump off a boat!

This was to be their first Christmas without him and for a while she had really been hoping they would be able to recapture a little of what they used to have at this time of year. She felt she had been a fool to give him her heart in the first place all those years ago, only for him to give his to someone else when she wasn't looking. And yet, she felt she would also be fooled again if he was to come back to them, and kiss her like he used to, and even try to start things over again. Maybe some were just born fools, she thought.

She looked around and she didn't seem to have a shoulder to cry on, as much as she needed one, and so she stepped into the bathroom to take a shower and try to drown out her misery. When she was done she stood in front of the mirror and tried to fix her face. Then she saw the door open beside her and glancing downward she saw E.T. coming in.

"Good morning, E.T!" she said, trying to sound cheerful.

"Good morning, Mom of my friend Elliot," replied E.T. "E.T. is curious and has questions which Elliot could not answer and said only you would have answers for E.T.."

"Well, alright, E.T. What do you want to know?" she asked.

"How do you humans love each other, and if you love each other why do you separate? These are what E.T. is curious about."

These had been the very least of the questions she had expected and at the moment she was clueless as to how to answer them. She looked long at E.T. who looked up at her with his big, wide, gentle, inquisitive blue eyes, calmly waiting for her to answer, and finally she spoke.

"It all begins, I suppose, when you're very young and you hear tales of people who find someone special and fall in love with each other and live happily ever after and you wish with all your heart that this will happen to you. Then as you grow older you look around for that special someone and you just can't seem to find them and the harder you look the shorter you come up, or when you think you might have seen them they turn out not be who they were at first glance."

"Then if you're lucky enough you find a special someone who is everything he says he is, which is everything you ever wanted, and he makes you feel special and treats you like you are the most important person in his life. Then if you're smart you spend a long time getting to know each other, or if you can't wait because you want to have his children, as was what happened with me, you get married and move into the home you've always wanted with him."

"Then a whole new life begins for you and you have the children you've always wanted and they are a handful but you love them as much as you and your mate love each other combined because it was that very love which brought them into the world. You like to wake up each morning and start all over again because you've got a family you love and you have good times and bad times and you don't let the bad ones overrule the good ones because you believe your love for your family will see you through anything and everything."

"But if it is a good as that, then why should one of you leave the other?" E.T. asked. "E.T. does not understand."

"Well, one day," continued Mary solemnly, "you wake up and your special someone is looking at you completely differently, like you've changed, or he's changed, or both. You feel as if you are no longer good enough for him, not smart, not pretty enough. You start having more bad times than good times, you feel as if you are reaching your end. Then before you know it another someone has entered the life of your mate and this someone is much more special to him than you are, much smarter, much prettier. And he wants nothing to do with you anymore, and later you find out neither with your children which you've been raising together for the past fifteen years. And so, after a long discussion you go to court and get separated from your no longer special someone and you keep the children because his new mate has no interest in them. He goes away with her to Mexico even though he hates Mexico which shows how much more he loves her than you. Now you're left behind to raise three children by yourself, struggling just to make ends meet, worrying forever about how this terrible twist of fate will affect your kids!" Mary finished with an almost uncontrollable sob.

E.T. now had all the information he needed as he could feel Mary's pain mentally and emotionally. He lit his left forefinger as he reached up and touched Mary at the tip of her heart, regenerating her with the happy energy she had felt in the past few days. Instantly her eyes dried, her face relaxed, and her breath calmed.

"E.T. is sorry," he said once again.

"It's alright," Mary said softly. "I suppose parents never separate where you come from."

"No," he replied. "Actually, we all have only one parent as we are the same gender and we self-implant our offspring when we come to the right age."

* * *

"You're so lucky," Mary said enviously. She then went into the kitchen to make breakfast while she listened to a song on the radio called _Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas._

"Elliot, will you play house with me, please?" Gertie asked eagerly.

"I can't. I, uh, got to walk Harvey," Elliot said hastily.

Gertie screwed her face up in a pout and then turned to Michael. "Will you play house with me, please?"

"Sorry, Gertie, I have a party to go to," he said with honesty.

Gertie's bottom lip began to tremble badly. She scrunched up her face and was just about to let out a wail when E.T., who was sensing the imminent turmoil, stepped out and said, "E.T. will play house with Gertie!"

At once Gertie's wail turned into a gasp of joy and Elliot and Michael looked immensely relieved as they went their separate ways.

As E.T. followed Gertie to her room he began to wonder about what he had just got himself into. He couldn't forget the last time he had agreed to play house with Gertie and she had donned him in a dress, a wool muffler, a long, curly wig and hat, and half a dozen bits of costume jewelry. He hadn't minded much at first, but the minute Elliot came in and saw in dress-up had felt it was the most embarrassing moment of his life.

This time, however, she led to a small white table with flowers painted around it, set with tiny white plastic teacups and a matching teapot. Surrounding it were a few of the stuffed toys he remembered from his last visit including the blue elephant, the pink bunny, and the Raggedy-Ann doll.

"What will she do to me this time?" E.T. whispered to the toys around him.

"No need to worry," replied the Raggedy-Ann doll. "Since she's brought you here she just wants to have a tea party, except we don't like tea so we drink apple juice, and the worst thing she'll do is want you to be my daddy."

E.T. was still feeling rather unsure of himself as Gertie took a long piece of black silk out of the small white drawers beside her bed and wrapped it around him, fastening it with a red bow that tied in the back, after which she went again to her drawer and took out a miniature black top hat and placed it on his wide flat head, giving him a bit of a comical appearance.

She went briefly into the closet and took out a red apron with the words Mom of the House on it in white letters and tied around herself and said, "Now you just be my man of the house while be the hostess!"

E.T. sat still, not knowing how to be the man of the house as he was far from a man, and watched as Gertie poured apple juice from the teapot into the teacups.

Mary stood over the kitchen sink washing the dishes and absently muttering the lyrics of _Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas_ to herself.

"Have yourself a merry little Christmas, let your heart be light. From now on, our troubles will be out of sight..." _I only wish it were true, _she thought to herself.

Her lonely thoughts were abruptly interrupted by the ringing of the telephone on the wall beside her. Automatically she picked it up, put the receiving end to her ear and said "Hello?"

A deep and mature, yet tender and gentle voice said, "Merry Christmas, Mrs. Taylor! Do you remember me?"

Instantly Mary's heart swelled with warmth as the recognition of the voice ringed in. "Keys! How nice to hear from you again!"

Keys was the leading scientist of the team of officials that had invaded their house two months ago when E.T. had first been with them. E.T. had been terminally ill at the time and the scientists had looked him over but couldn't seem to find what was wrong with him and they also hadn't been able to revive him when he had gone into a coma.

Mary remembered how she had been frightened when her home had been invaded by the space-suit wearing scientists from the government, and then they had kept asking her questions she couldn't answer. She was very confused until Michael had explained about E.T. to her and Keys had explained they had known about a lost alien being that was left in the woods and using high-tech tracking devices they had tracked him to their neighborhood and when the coast was clear had found out which house he was in. He also mentioned how he and his team had no desire to harm E.T. but only wanted to learn about him, and also to help him.

"I'm so glad you remember me!" said Keys over the phone. "I wanted to know how you and your children are doing at this time of year, and I also want to apologize for all the trouble and stress my team had caused you."

"You've already apologized. Really, it's alright, all is forgiven," she assured him. "I'm just glad that you saw that they all cleared everything out again when the escapade was over, and also that you told them not to question my children and their friends or to press charges for, I quote, 'stolen government property'!" She finished with a lighthearted chuckle.

Keys chuckled as well and said, "Most of my colleagues don't believe me that the extra-terrestrial is alive and I saw him leave in his spaceship, and the few who do are just crazy with envy! They all, however, have agreed that the next time we discover something of the supernatural within someone's doors we will ask first if we can enter and investigate."

"That's good," said Mary. "So how are you?"

"I'm fine," said Keys. "I'm still in the field of researching extra-terrestrial life along with my colleagues and we've agreed to not make public the record of our findings, and right now we're taking the time off for the holidays. Now enough about me, how are you? I hope you are having a merry Christmas with your family."

"I am!" Mary said brightly. Then she thought a moment and added, "Well, not as much as I could, though. My former husband said he can't come visit on Christmas day."

"I'm sorry to hear that," said Keys kindly. "You'd think he would feel more considerate toward the woman who gave him three very special children. Would you mind if came to visit them on Christmas?"

Mary thought about this for a moment, and then figuring she could trust Keys she replied, "The extra-terrestrial is visiting us for Christmas."

"You're kidding me, right?" said Keys with a disbelieving laugh.

"No," said Mary. "We invited him and he's here now."

There was a stunned silence for a moment and then Keys said in a serious tone, "Mary, I must meet with him. He must know I never intended any harm to come to him, it's very important. You see, I've met him before. I've never told anyone about it, but once when I was Elliot's age I was on a camping trip with my family and on the last night I was sleeping in the tent when I was awakened by strange noises and I got out to investigate and I stepped into some dense fog in the woods and suddenly this little extra-terrestrial being came up to me, extended its neck, and spoke to me in an alien tongue, and somehow I got scared and I screamed and made it scream and it ran away from me. Then my parents came and found me, and they never believed me when I told them what I'd seen. He's the reason I am who I am today, the reason why I went to college and majored in science and study the paranormal."

Mary now had a much better understanding of Keys and replied, "Of course I'll have to speak to him about it first, but you are welcome to come."

"Thank you so much, Mrs. Taylor, you don't know what this means to me."

"Please, call me Mary," she said.

"Okay, and now I guess it's safe to tell you my wife divorced me five years ago because I had become so obsessed with finding extra-terrestrial life. She said she didn't like feeling like she was married to an alien."

"I'm so sorry," said Mary. "It seems... you and I are on the same road, so to speak."

"Yes... and... thanks again... Mary," Keys said just before hanging up.

Mary put the phone up again and then continued humming the Christmas tune, now with a bit more spirit.

* * *

"Have yourself a merry little Christmas, make the Yuletide gay. From now on, our troubles will be miles away."

Then she heard the phone ring again. She picked it up and spoke into it. "Hello?"

* * *

"Hiya, Mary! What's up?" said the voice of her younger sister on the other end.

* * *

"Hello, Martha," she said with her smile heard in her voice. "How is Christmas in Delaware?"

* * *

"It's great, very cold, though," said Martha jubilantly. "In fact, we're having a real blizzard down here, it's keeping us all indoors. Luckily I got my Christmas shopping done first! I wanted to know if the presents I sent arrived yet?"

* * *

"Yes, they did a couple of days ago," Mary assured her.

* * *

"Good! So, where did you find them this year?"

* * *

"The same place I always hide them every year!" Mary said with a laugh.

Martha giggled as well and then said, "So have you been having a merry Christmas in California?"

* * *

"So far, yes. But I've just received some rather distressing news from John," replied Mary softly.

* * *

"Uh oh. What?" asked Martha, fearfully.

* * *

"He can't make it this Christmas," said Mary soberly. "Sally is keeping him in one place."

* * *

"Oh God no!" sighed Martha in a distraught tone. "What kind of man puts some babbling bimbo before his real family? You really shouldn't have married him, you should have took my advice and remained single with me."

* * *

"This may come as a shock to you, but I do not regret marrying him," said Mary with a touch of sarcasm. "I am grateful for the children he gave me for they make my life worth living still, and I'm also grateful for the fifteen years we had together, and besides everything that is nice comes to an end sometime you know."

* * *

"Yes, I know. Like how childhood ends to quickly," Martha replied. "I just don't want to rush into marriage before I'm ready and I just want to enjoy being young as much as I can before I fully face the burdens of being an adult which marriage and parenthood brings."

* * *

"You might be surprised at how much having kids can make you feel like being a kid again yourself," replied Mary.

* * *

"Well, I just wish I could be there with you, Marion, Bye."

* * *

"Bye, Marthie," said Mary before she hung up.

* * *

Mary went back to her chores while humming the next verse of _Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas._

* * *

"Here we are as in olden days, happy golden days of yore. Faithful friends who are dear to us gather near to us once more."

As she sang this she began to think of her parents who were now her children's grandparents, and as she was thinking about them the phone suddenly rang again and she picked it up and said "Hello?" into it, and a very old yet kindly voice spoke to her very familiarly.

* * *

"Merry Christmas, dear!"

* * *

"Merry Christmas to you, Mom! How are you?"

* * *

"Oh, you know at my age you try to have the merriest Christmas you can because it may be your last."

* * *

"Aw, Mom!" Mary chided. "You're only seventy-eight."

* * *

"Exactly, and that is why I've called, I want to ask if you'll come visit with us this Christmas."

* * *

"Oh, I wish we could, Mom," said Mary sadly. "But, you see, we are having some rather important guests over here this year."

* * *

"I understand, dear," replied her mother. "So in that case we'll come to visit you... if we can."

Mary thought about this. On the one hand she'd like her parents to come and meet E.T, on the other hand, she wasn't so sure about how they would react to him, he was after all a real-life alien being.

* * *

"Mom, are you absolutely certain you want to come?" she asked hesitantly.

* * *

"Why, of course I am!" replied her mother, sounding surprised she'd ask such a question. "After all, me and Martin are just, if you'll pardon the expression, dying to see our grandchildren again."

Mary chuckled softly. "Mom, you just saw them three months ago when you came for Elliot's birthday."

* * *

"Well, anyways," her Mom continued, "We think that our being there will be good on behalf of the kids, after all I know how hard it must be on them not that Johnathon has left you to yourselves. When I saw you two married fifteen years ago, I honestly thought you would be together forever."

Wanting to change the subject, Mary said, "Would you like to talk to the kids now? Michael is at a Christmas party, but Elliot and Gertie are right here."

* * *

"Of course, I'd love to!" replied her Mom.

E.T. was sitting in respectable silence as Gertie was playing house with him and he kept himself occupied by listening to the Raggedy-Ann doll's entertaining stories of her life with Gertie.

* * *

"And there was the time when Gertie started sleepwalking and put into the bathtub..." she was just now saying.

* * *

"Gertie! Elliot! Grandma is on the phone and would like to talk to you both!"

Gertie's face instantly lit up with ecstasy when she heard her mother calling for her and came running.

Mary handed the phone to her and she spoke into it. "Hello, Grandma! Remember when you told me about the Man in the Moon?"

Michael stepped into the next neighborhood and walked across the street to Haily's house. When he reached it he stood at the door and rang the doorbell. Within moments the door was opened by a rather large man with graying brown hair who eyed him suspiciously.

"Um... I'm Michael Taylor. I'm here to pick up Haily," he said uncertainly.

The man, who was apparently Haily's father, stepped aside and let him in.

"Before you go to the party, I want to have a word with you," he said rather firmly.

"You're not gonna kill me, are you?" Michael asked nervously.

"No," he assured him. "But I want you to know, Haily is my daughter and she means more to me than anything in the world and I do not want to see her hurt by anyone."

"As in physical... emotional?" asked Michael subconsciously.

"As in both," he replied. "I want you to understand I am allowing you to be with Haily on the trust that she will not be harmed by you or by anyone who comes your way."

"I understand, sir," said Michael truthfully.

"If harm does come to her, though," he added seriously. "I will be after you like a wild cow."

Just then, Haily came down the stairs wearing a sweater with a Christmas design on it. "I'm ready, Michael," she said. "Bye Daddy."

As they left the house together she said, "I'm sorry about Daddy, he's just so overprotective."

"So I've noticed," he replied.

They soon came to Tyler's house, where the party was being held, and they saw the house was decorated all over with lights and there was a set of plastic snowmen in the yard, there was no snow of course since they were in California.

Michael stood on the doorstep and rang the doorbell and soon Tyler opened the door. He was wearing a red Santa Claus cap and a sweater with a picture of a snowman wearing sunglasses, a leather jacket, and holding a bottle of coke.

"Season's greetings, Mike, Haily," he said smiling. "Come on in and help yourselves to some Christmas goodies!"

"Thanks, Ty!" said Michael as he and Haily stepped into the living room which was filled with warmth and brightly lit and meticulously decorated with Christmas lights and garlands hanging from the walls while the music of _It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas_ could be heard playing from a record player. There was a big Christmas tree at the left of the room, covered with candy canes, colored balls, and tinsel, and at the right end there was a long table laden with just about all kinds of Christmas treats and goodies imaginable.

Michael and Haily stepped over to table of refreshments and he selected some Christmas tree shaped cookies with green frosting and sprinkles while she took some snowflake shaped ones with white frosting and sprinkles.

As they were helping themselves a boy with thick, wavy dark hair and eyes came up to them and said in a noticeable Hispanic accent, "Feliz Navidad." They both looked at him questioningly and he said, "That means 'Merry Christmas' in Spanish. I'm Tony Armando, pleased to meet you."

"Same her," said Michael. "I'm Mike, this is Haily. I don't think I remember seeing you around?"

"That is because me and my family have just come over, and this is my first Christmas here," replied Tony.

"Oh. So you're from Mexico?" asked Michael, and Tony nodded. "Are you enjoying Christmas here?"

"I certainly am," said Tony. "Everyone is so nice and generous this time of year. Although I admit it does seem kind of strange to not see snow everywhere, and to see snowmen and reindeer and Santas in front of houses instead of scenes of the Nativity."

"So Christmas in Mexico is a little different than it is here?" asked Michael.

"It is kind of," said Tony. "For instance, it is the Magi that brings us gifts on January fifth and not the jolly old fat man on December twenty-fifth. I also miss the pinata."

"What's a pinata?" asked Michael.

"It's a sort of basket wrapped in colored papier mache and shaped like an animal," Tony tried to explain, "and it is filled with candied fruits and sometimes toys, and children are blindfolded as they take turns trying to break it open with a stick."

"Wow, that sounds really cool," said Michael. "I wish I had one here."

"So do I," said Tony. "So I mentioned about it to Tyler and he agreed to have one made for the party. It looks like the reindeer of Santa... what was his name? Rudolph!"

"Awesome!" Michael exclaimed happily.

Soon the pinata was brought out and hung on a string pinned to the ceiling, then one by one they took turns being blindfolded and trying to whack it with a long pole. Almost everyone had had a turn before Haily finally broke it in it's side and dozens of goods and prizes rained out of it and they all bent over the floor trying to scrape up as much of the pinata's insides as they could.

Afterward, they played Christmas games including Christmas Card Toss in which they took the ten Christmas cards in all they had and took turns throwing them in a laundry basket six feet away and the person who gets the most cards in the basket wins the game which was extremely difficult to do; and then Christmas Macaroni in which they divided into two teams each with a bowl of alphabet macaroni which Tony had supplied and the team to come up with most Christmas themed items spelled out on the table won; and then I Packed Santa's Bag in which they sat in a circle and started with "I packed Santa's bag, and in it I put..." and the next person follows and adds one item to the pack and this goes on until everyone is out by missing; and then Stocking Stumpers in which everyone took turns telling Christmas themed jokes and giving everyone a turn at guessing them.

Lastly they played Twas the Night Before Christmas Pass-Around Gift Exchange in which they sat in a circle each holding the gift they brought to the party and while The Night Before Christmas poem was being read each person passes their gift to the person on their right when the reader says right; when the reader says left, each passes the gift he has to the left. The gift each person each person has in their hands at the conclusion of the poem is theirs to keep.

Once everyone had their gifts there was a dance contest with the record player set to the songs _Jingle Bell Rock, Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, _and _Santa Claus is Coming to Town._ Michael danced with Haily through most of it and they came in second place.

Later as Michael was walking Haily home he asked, "Did you enjoy the party?"

"I sure did!" she said. "I especially liked the games we played. I liked packing Santa's bag!"

"I packed Santa's bag and in it I put a teddy bear, and a fruitcake, and a TV!" Michael sang out.

Haily laughed and then asked, "Do you still believe in Santa Claus?"

"I believe in the spirit of Santa Claus," Michael replied. "I believe that every kid should wake up on Christmas morning and find presents under their tree. I believe Christmas and Santa Claus go together like cookies and milk do."

"Speaking of presents, what do you want for Christmas?" she asked.

"Um... I'd like one of those new video games from Nintendo that came out last year starring that cool dude, what's his name? Mario... something?"

He didn't tell her what he really wanted for Christmas, and that was for his Dad to come visit them so they could have a real family Christmas like they did last year.

"As for me, I just want a hula-hoop," said Haily.

"We can hardly stand the wait! Please Christmas don't be late!" Michael sang out, remembering the Christmas Special that aired on TV last year that was so popular.

He and Haily sang all the way home.


	7. Chapter 7

Later in the evening E.T. came out of the closet and found Mary in the living room as she was on the couch sitting perfectly still and staring straight ahead at the television set looking about as stone faced as could be imagined. E.T. felt very curious as he listened to the news stories that were being broadcast through the television set.

"_Talk about a Holiday scare," _a reporter was speaking._"A couple comes home to discover crooks in their living room trying to rip them off. The duo of thieves wearing ski masks held the victims at gun point as they took off with the goods. They quickly got away. Now police are in search of the Christmas Eve bandits."_

E.T. felt most disheartened at hearing this report for now he knew what the word bandit meant. Before he had assumed it to mean something good because it was a B word which had been the first letter he had learned, so now to learn it meant crooked thieves who ripped other people's good off of them was from troubling for him.

The reporter went on to the next story, _"A little boy is still hanging on tonight after he was found in the bottom of a pond yesterday. The two-year-old is in critical condition in Children's Hospital, and we told you yesterday he had wandered off from his parents at Bay Side and neighbors found him in the water. The Rescue Crew said he had been underwater for three minutes"_

The broadcast shifted to show the image of a small toddler laying very still in a hospital bed with an almost ghostly pale complexion. E.T.'s tender heart went out to the child and he lit his forefinger as he aimed it at the television screen and whispered "Heal." However, before he could see if it took the desired effect the picture shifted again to the reporter continuing on with the next story.

"_A Ukrainian Plane goes down over at Iran with fatal consequences. All forty-six people aboard the plane were killed as the plane crashed in the mountainous region as the plane prepared to land. Most of those aboard were Ukrainian and Russian scientists who were reportedly traveling to Iran to watch the maiden flight of joint Ukrainian/Iranian built passenger plane. There is no word yet on the cause of the crash." _

E.T. found this news report to be even more disturbing than the other two for it dealt with the actual deaths of forty-six people and it also reminded him of how careless and clumsy human beings could be in building and flying their aircraft. In the rest of the Universe there were rarely any such crash landings, with such exceptions as the Cealan crashing onto Earth's Roswell region of about forty years ago.

He looked up at Mary and found himself wondering how she could manage to remain so stone faced at all these depressing reports the newscast kept giving. He pondered if it might have had to do with her having already experienced something to cause her much greater suffering. Then another newscast began.

"_You won't find a lot of Christmas spirit in the town of Bethlehem this year which is being occupied by Israeli troops. There is no tree in Manger Square, no bells, no holly, and few tourists. Many in the region aren't happy about the condition."_

"_The people, they don't feel happy, you know, because the situation here is very bad," _said a woman who was being interviewed.

"_Today the Latin patriarch and a procession of people made the annual journey from Jerusalem to the Church of the Nativity and were greeted by Palestinian boy scouts carrying Palestinian flags," _the reporter went on. Then the scene shifted to an old man wearing a long white robe with a big golden cross in the middle who was apparently addressing the congregation of people before him who were as stiff and as stone faced as Mary currently was. In the background there was the image of what looked like a miniature wooden house with a man and woman were long sagging robes in front of it kneeling over a tiny infant laying in a what looked like a wooden cradle filled with straw.

"_I welcome all you naughty sinners on this blessed day of the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who as you all know, and to Hell with you if you don't, died for you, each and every one of you even though it was long before your time and you had essentially nothing to do with his murdering it is still all your faults as you have all inherited the unforgivably nasty selfishness of Adam and Eve of whom you all descended from six thousand years ago when they ate of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden because they were childish enough to believe that having knowledge was good for them. You forced your Heavenly Father to condemn you and all of your children to the Lake of Eternal Fire but you were all saved turned himself into a baby and saved you all for he loves you all even though none of you deserve it at all!"_

This was something which E.T. had never seen before and never heard before and he cringed as he listened to the old man's words which made his sensitive ears burn. How could he stand there telling those poor people lies that were so blatantly false he must surely know they were not true himself. For one thing the Earth was in reality 6.5 billion years old not six thousand and he knew this because his ancestors had watched the Earth form and grow from its beginning, and planets only a few thousand years old were too young support life on land. For another there are no such things as Saviors for Earth or any other planet for the matter for if Earth had one there would have been no need for his and other intergalactic colonies to make trips to Earth and try to research as much as they could of it and its inhabitants to save it from destruction.

He began to think about the children of the Earth, especially Elliot, and their being exposed to these outlandish atrocities and how they shouldn't believe that they were guilty of committing a crime before they were even born and spend their lives trying to make up for it or paying for it for it would stifle their growth and damage their mental awareness. He knew he could never let this happen to the children whom he loved and had done so much for him and he began trying to think of a way to prevent this from happening, and the very idea of how to came to him.

He trotted out of the room with Mary still taking no notice of his presence and went to look for Elliot. He hauled himself up the stairs to look for Elliot in his room. Once in there he found no trace of him and then it somehow occurred to him to look out the window and when he did he found him sitting in a comfortable looking position in the nook of the roof above the window below.

E.T. carefully and quietly crawled out of the open window on his hands and short knees and crept up beside Elliot and sat with him as he was gazing into the starry sky.

Elliot glanced over at him and put his hand on his shoulder. "Can you see your home from up here?" he asked.

"No," E.T. replied. "It too far."

"There's the Christmas Star, you see it?" Elliot pointed to a particularly bright star straight above them.

E.T. looked up, extending his neck, and looked at the star Elliot pointed to. He thought he knew what star it was. "Christmas Star? What do you mean?" E.T. asked curiously.

"It's the star the three Wise Men followed that led them to Bethlehem," replied Elliot.

"Wise Men? Bethlehem? E.T. does not understand," he said.

"Well, it's like this," said Elliot. "A man named Joseph and his wife Mary rode into Bethlehem and couldn't find any place to stay except in a stable and Mary had her baby in the manger and his name was Jesus and he was the son of God."

"Who told you this?" E.T. wanted to know.

"I learned it at my Sunday School, five years ago," Elliot replied. "I was told it was the reason why we have Christmas."

"And you believed it?" asked E.T. intently.

"Well... why shouldn't I?" asked Elliot, confused at E.T.'s questioning.

"Because it is wrong," E.T. stated calmly.

"It's wrong?" said Elliot, more confused than surprised.

"Yes, it is wrong," replied E.T.

"Why?" asked Elliot.

"Because there is no such thing as a god of Earth, or of any other planet, so he cannot have been the son of a god, if he even existed."

"You mean the whole thing was all made up?" asked Elliot, now beginning to actually sound surprised.

"Yes, exactly," said E.T. matter-of-factually. "The human beings of ancient, your ancestors, they led very ignorant lives, and many still do. They didn't know anything and didn't know how to learn anything for a long time and so they made those things up to satisfy themselves because it was the only thing they knew to do."

"Are you sure, E.T.?" Elliot asked, feeling stunned.

"Trust me, Elliot," he said. "If there were a god and he had a son my race would have long since known about it, but we have watched your species evolve over millions of years and it seems you have yet to understand, as we do, about how the Universe works."

Elliot was so stunned it took him a moment to try to take it all in. "Well, if what I'd heard at school isn't the reason for Christmas, then what is?" he wondered aloud.

"Hmm..." E.T. became thoughtful a moment. "My race and I have observed the rotation of your planet around its star, or sun, and for three days towards the end of the year which you call December and some know as Winter the days and nights are equally as long. We have something similar on my planet and we call it a Solstice. So I believe what you and your race celebrate at this time of year is your Winter Solstice."

"Well," said Elliot, sounding slightly downhearted. "If that's all there is to it then what reason is there to celebrate anyway?"

"You have given me plenty of reasons to want to celebrate it," E.T. assured him. "By inviting me here to be with you and your family again and showing me all of the wonderful little things of your planet, and just by being you."

"But, I mean," said Elliot. "If there is no God then what is the purpose for life, and how did we get here in the first place?"

E.T. smiled. This was the question he had been waiting for. "Well, I can't tell you all the details, so you'll just have to see for yourself. Look there!"

Elliot turned his head along with E.T.'s and looked towards an open space of black sky amidst the stars.

"Look harder," urged E.T.

Elliot looked harder, his eyes focusing in on the empty black space.

"Harder!" E.T. urged.

Elliot looked harder with his eyes widening.

"_Harder!" _E.T. urged.

Elliot strained himself to concentrate on the dark expanse of space only... and then it happened.

He saw a tiny white light grow and expand until it filled the whole sky and then it seemed to explode itself in a bang so big and loud it could not be heard and massive streaks of blue and white light covered everything and the light kept stretching out and enlarging into huge waves of energy and matter which kept colliding together over and over. Elliot felt like he was sitting up in the very front most seat of the biggest movie screen as he watched what looked like a giant pinball game of red and white streaks and dots of light and after a few minutes it settled down, decreased in size, and turned to dark blue.

Then he seemed to be in the center of what looked like thick, foamy, transparent blue and green and red clouds of hydrogen. He watched as they began to condense over time and were being pulled together by their own gravity and turned from purple to violet to blue to turquoise to aqua to green to yellow to orange and then it became brighter and brighter until it seemed to explode in light and radiation, and when it calmed it left a huge glowing ball which looked like a star, and then it occurred to Elliot it was also a sun. The sun remained the same for a time and then it began growing darker and darker, turning orange and then red and then it seemed to swell larger and larger and then it burst like an overblown balloon, sending red and yellow dust particles everywhere like a cosmic dust storm.

The dust kept scattering around and then it seemed to be drawing back as if being sucked in by a vacuum. Pulled in by gravity the dust swirled around and formed a disc with a bright red center. As the pressure built up the temperature rose and as more mass and energy was added to it it became solid and changed to orange to yellow. It was a brand-new star, and soon Elliot realized it was none other than the star at the center of his own solar system. Then he watched as leftover dust particles scattered away from the sun and began coming together and forming small rocks floating in space. These rocks began colliding with each other and formed into bigger rocks and as the rocks grew so did the collisions. Some rocks that hit head on broke apart while others stuck together and the more they grew the stronger was the gravity pulling them.

Eventually, the gravity shaped them into small round planets, just a few miles across. They began growing from car sized, to house sized, to mountain sized, to the size of the moon, and a few of the bigger ones collided with others and then formed the three planets orbiting closest to the sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars. Elliot zoomed in like the lens of a movie camera on the third planet which was his Earthly home, except it looked very different from the one he knew.

The Earth was nothing more than a fiery rock covered with lava. Volcanoes were erupting everywhere sending vast amounts of steam into the atmosphere which was causing heavy downfalls of acid rain. The newborn Earth was so full of energy as it was vigorously recycling and melting its materials over and over so constantly Elliot seemed to be watching a tape on fast forward.

He watched as an asteroid, or a meteorite from outer space fell out of the red sky and crashed into the red liquid layers of rocks. Quickly, more meteorites began crashing down, generating waves of intense heat into the atmosphere. The combined effect was catastrophic and the planet became a raging furnace. As the temperatures reached thousands of degrees dense metal in the Earth's rocky surface such as iron and nickel melted and became a liquid rock ocean hundreds of kilometers thick.

The melted iron sank into the Earth's center where it formed a molten core which gave the Earth a magnetic field that protected it from the harm of the solar wind. Still the Earth was a hostile and inhabitable planet with no oxygen and no water. Then suddenly another massive rock about the size of Mars crashed into the Earth. The impact was so great it melted both it's and the Earth's outer layers resulting in a new and bigger Earth. At the same time the collision threw vast amounts of molten rock into space which came together and formed the Earth's moon.

The moon was at first about two-hundred thousand feet closer to the Earth than it is today and the Earth was spinning much faster making each day only six hours long, and with the moon so close its gravitational pull on the Earth was enormous and the land rose and fell about two-hundred feet during the moon's phases. Then as the moon began to slowly drift away the Earth's rotation slowed down and it's molten lava layers cooled to form it's crust.

Then numerous mountain sized comets began falling into the Earth, the impact melting the ice in them and creating thick clouds which poured down hot rain which lasted for years, forming first rivers and lakes, and then eventually almost all of the Earth was covered in water. Although the planet was still unsuitable for life with poisonous gases filling its atmosphere. Then gradually small plants began to grow in the soil and as they sprouted higher and higher above the surface they gave out oxygen to renew the atmosphere.

Elliot's attention was now on the surface of the ocean which had turned from green to blue and he saw dozens of tiny fish swimming in its waters. Then he watched as they grew fins and tails, and then teeth and limbs. He saw them crawling out of the water and onto the land now looking somewhere between a frog and a lizard. He watched them lay their eggs and watched as some of them hatched into much more lizard like creatures. The time seemed to be speeding up again as he watched the grow bigger and wider and form longer legs and sharper teeth. He watched these monstrous creatures hunt their prey and raise their young for a few moments before the scenery suddenly shifted again and became much dryer and barer and these enormous beasts seemed to be disappearing.

Then he watched the smaller reptiles grow and change like the ones before them and start a whole new race called dinosaurs. Then for about three and a half minutes he watched a Jurassic park of Brontosauruses, Triceratops, Brakosauruses, Allosauruses, Stegosauruses, and Pterodactyls roaming in herds and battling the dreaded Tyrannosaurus Rex. He watched the dinosaurs migrate when their climates began to change and watched them hatch young which grew into new kinds of dinosaurs over the millenniums. Then before his eyes the dinosaurs began disappearing as the land began drastically changing. Then he watched as suddenly a meteorite hit the Earth and the sky was blazing and filled dust and debris. The dinosaurs' reign was officially over.

Then he watched the land gradually redeem itself and he saw tiny mammals come out of their shelter. He watched how they grew as they adapted to their new environment and then suddenly the Earth was being dominated by mammals large and small who looked like the ancestors of elephants, giraffes, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, and wild cats, and he also saw giant birds with giant beaks walking around. Once again carnivores and herbivores were roaming around preying on each other and trying to breed young.

There was one creature in particular that caught his attention. It was a family of monkeys jumping around on a tall tree nearby. He had never seen these kind of monkeys before and yet they seemed so familiar to him. After a moment one of the younger monkeys jumped down from a branch and began moving towards him. He was halfway to him when there was suddenly a bright flash and the scenery changed yet again and the monkey had changed as well for he was now walking erectly and had a different set of features making him look more related to a chimpanzee. Elliot stared at him for a long moment when it suddenly occurred to him that this peculiar kind of monkey looked like him in a much hairier state. Then suddenly the monkey heard its relatives calling for it and it scampered away from him.

Then the scenery shifted again and he saw another family of monkeys in a somewhat different place and the monkeys now looked almost human or at least halfway. He watched as they played together and scavenged for food together and took care of their young and when he saw a mother nursing a baby he was so struck by how much it nearly resembled a human infant. He watched the scenery shifting again as they began migrating as the climate was changing as did their prehistoric relatives.

With the new changing of time and place he saw another new family of whom he was now fully convinced were his own ancestors walking in a desert like place carrying large clubs and apparently hunting for beasts to kill for food and clothing. They looked just like humans except with apelike features and muscles. One of the leading cavemen let out a strange kind of yell and pointed to a large deer like creature ahead of them, and as they all rushed forward with their clubs and knives there came from ahead of them another tribe of human like creatures though they were hairier with seemingly much bigger bones and Elliot reckoned these must be the Neanderthals who he now saw were not his ancestors but rather the cousins of his ancestors. Then as it became apparent there was to be a fight over the feast the scenery began shifting all over again.

He now saw before a family of homo sapiens that looked almost exactly like the human beings he was familiar with in his own time gathered around a campfire and roasting fresh meat and feeding each other, while at the same time attempting to nurse the wounds of one of their kin who was laying in the arms of an older female who was likely his mother. As the darkness turned to daylight it became apparent the wounded one wouldn't survive and the rest of them got up and left his lifeless body behind them. This seemed an abhorrent thing to do to Elliot but he reckoned these ancestors just hadn't yet developed their consciousness to mourn their deceased.

As he saw the landscape changing, becoming hotter and dryer, he saw his ancestors changed with it. They became thinner with lesser hair and their skin turned a very dark shade of brown. He watched them learn to save food and water as they migrated from their inhospitable climate. He saw them make their way to the continent that would later be called Europe, and as he watched them adapt to their new environment he watched them change gradually over the centuries with their skin becoming lighter and lighter. He watched how they developed their language skills and invent writing and officiate names and then last names including the name Taylor.

Then he watched how his ancestors came from England to the new American colonies around the time of the Mayflower Voyage. He watched them become Americans and then watched them attend the reception of the new Constitution and help get George Washington elected. Then he watched some of them participate in, and a few die in the Civil War and the first and second World War.

He saw that overall and with rare exceptions all of his ancestors had been good and honest people and they had fought against slavery, racism, bigotry, the great depression, and homelessness. He had relatives who were policemen, firemen, archaeologists, astronomers, and watchmakers. He watched the history of his bloodline up until the moment he and his siblings were born, and when the film roll had run out the beam of light from the beginning repeated itself in reverse and then the sky became its normal self again.

"Wow!" exclaimed Elliot when he had somewhat recovered from his thrill ride through time. "That was quite an experience I won't ever forget! So that was how it all began?"

"Yes," said E.T. confidently. "What you have just seen is the knowledge my ancestors have saved up since the very beginning. You went through exactly four-billion years in fifteen minutes."

"Wow! Just like home movies!" Elliot said breathlessly. "But are you positive that the birth of the planet and the evolution of species I just saw was of my own?"

For just one moment E.T. looked offended, though the look quickly passed and he replied very calmly, "Yes, indeed. My ancestors knew about your ancestors from their birth and also many other civilizations of other species and we have the technology to keep track of what we see and learn which your race has been lacking for such a long time."

"Well, it was certainly more awesome and inspiring than any made-up creation story I've ever heard," said Elliot matter of factually. "And it also makes a lot more sense even though I'd never have been able to understand it if I hadn't seen it like I just did."

"Yes, I know," said E.T. solemnly. "Your ancestor's brains developed so much slower than ours did that since they had no way of understanding how they came to be they did the only thing they knew how to do and that was imagine how they came to be. The imagination that your kind has is both a wonderful and a terrible thing for it has advanced you in every way for the past thousand years and has helped you to survive through hardships, yet it also causes many of you to become seriously deluded and to start wars and invent dogmas which you have no need for. Now you have just been given a special gift of insight into your species history of how they came to be and how the thrived, evolved, and advanced over seven-million years. So now what do you think the answer to your question is? What is the purpose of living?"

"Well," said Elliot thoughtfully. "I think the purpose of living, of being here, is to try to make the world a better place for all its creatures to live on, and to leave behind new knowledge or wisdom for the people of the future so that we will continue to grow and be in harmony with all the other lifeforms there are out there."

"Very good!" said E.T. like a teacher praising his student. "I was hoping that's what you would decide, because that is what I think it is also."

"I really do appreciate the gift you've given me and all, E.T.," said Elliot more somberly. "But I think that now if I tell those I meet what I now know as truth and am honest about myself they won't believe it and will think I am a freak or something."

"I know," said E.T. gently. "Because they are used to what they think they know already. But you won't find too much trouble with it in the future because within the next twenty years your kind will begin to understand people who know different things than most, and you will become a champion in the new century to come of understanding truth and evolution and other living organisms. It is my, as you will call it, Christmas gift to you, Elliot Taylor."

"E.T., thank you! You're the best friend anyone could have in the whole Universe!" exclaimed Elliot as he threw his arms around E.T. and gave him the biggest hug this side of the Milky Way.

"I know you are, but what am I?" asked E.T.

Then as the temperature was dropping they went back inside through Elliot's bedroom window and found Gertie in her nightgown and bunny slippers as she came in from the adjoining room.

"So there you two are!" she said in a rather scolding tone. "Where have you been all this time?"

"We've been out looking at the stars," replied Elliot. "In fact, you ought to look at the stars more often, you could learn a lot from it."

Gertie gave him the infamous little sister's 'oh brother!' rolling of eyes and then she heartily exclaimed, "Come on let's hurry and get into bed! Santa doesn't come cheap to those who stay up late!"

Elliot chuckled as he joined her in racing for their beds and began quickly pulling of his shoes.

E.T. began thinking about Mary and remembering how alone she seemed to be this evening and she kept her distance from the children throughout most of the day. He felt he wanted to do something for her to make her feel better, he also wanted to give her something for he knew that they would have presents by tomorrow, and why shouldn't she have something for Christmas herself. He thought a moment and then an idea for a gift came to him.

He went over to Elliot's dresser and found the bag of Reese's Pieces on it. He took hold of it and reached in and found about twelve of the candies left in it. To him these were one of the most precious and glorious gifts of the Universe and he wanted to give them to her to let her know that he cared about her and did not want her to be sad.

He strolled quietly and cautiously into Mary's bedroom and found her laying on her stomach on her bed with her bare back exposed as she was partially wrapped in a white sheet on the bed as she seemed to be sleeping peacefully. He crept up to her bedside and laid the handful of Reese's Pieces onto her pillow close to her face so that they would be the first thing she saw when she woke up the next day.

Then he quietly crept out of the room and hopped downstairs into the living room to begin his next course of action. He went up to a set of framed pictures and picked out one of the kids absent father for he would need to see a picture so he could achieve the best results for what he was going to do, and the father looked a lot like Elliot which was all the more helpful.

E.T. focused in on the image of the father in the picture until his mind was completely centered on it. He thought about how the kids and Mary all needed to see him again on Christmas day, and about how much he needed to see them also. E.T. also thought about how lonely he had been when he was left behind until Elliot took him in and had saved him from certain death by caring about him and telling him he loved him and even though he felt at home on his own planet he also felt a sense of being loved and belonging with Elliot and his family. His intention was to telepathically transfer these feelings to Elliot's dad wherever he was and all he knew was it was somewhere between here and Mexico.

He continued this meditation up until he had exhausted himself from it. Then yawning he climbed back up the stairs hoping he had succeeded in what he wanted to accomplish.

Thousands of miles away, Johnathan Taylor was laying huddled in bed with his girlfriend Sally after a festive and long Christmas party with all their friends and lots of beer and by the time it was over he felt that he was content with everything going on in the world.

Then he began having a strangely vivid dream. He was remembering his past Christmases with Mary and their kids, about them being woken up early on Christmas morning to open the presents. Then he saw the situation his family was in in now and all because of him. He saw a bittersweet Christmas morning of Mary and the kids without him, he saw Elliot's face when Mary told him he couldn't make it over, and then he saw Gertie crying, and then Michael with a look of something like resentment on his face. Then he saw what future this could mean for them all and they had all nearly forgotten him and he was to never be a part of their lives again.

He suddenly sat up wide awake and the remains of a hangover were still lingering but he didn't care for all his thoughts were on his family now. He got out of bed and dressed in a hurry and then without saying goodbye to Sally he left and had the intention of being with his kids on Christmas day if he had to steal a flight on the first plane out of here.


	8. Chapter 8

E.T. Was awakened early the next morning when Elliot nearly knocked him over on the cot he was laying on as he jumped out of bed exclaiming, "It's Christmas! It's Christmas! Wake up E.T.! It's Christmas morning!"

E.T. watched as Elliot bounded out of the room and thought he had never seen him so happy before, he just hoped it would last.

E.T. crawled off of his cot and waddled into the living room where he found Elliot, Michael, Gertie, and Mary all gathered in the living room around the brightly lit and decorated Christmas tree which now had dozens of big and small packages under it all wrapped up in a shiny red and green paper with shiny red and green bows tied to the tops.

"Santa came!" Gertie exclaimed running toward the first present she could reach.

"We must have been really nice this year," Michael chuckled as he sat down beside his siblings.

E.T. watched as they all selected the presents that had their names on a tag attached to them and began pulling off the bows and ripping off the paper.

Elliot opened his first present and found a brand new baseball bat and he was at once overcome with a wave of nostalgia as he remembered when when his dad would teach him how to play baseball and how he was the worst at first at batting but with his dad's persistence he was now a lot better. He opened another present and found a shiny red bicycle helmet with a purple zigzag across the top and once again he was flooded with bittersweet memories of when his dad had been teaching him how to ride a bike and how he had picked him up and hugged him when he fell down on his first ride without training wheels. With the next present he opened he found a skateboard and in the next one a pair of roller-blades and he was happy to at last find something new and completely different.

Gertie opened her first present and found a new and genuine easy-bake oven complete with pans and trays and mitts. As a happy smile lit Gertie's face Elliot thought, _Great! No more mud pies!_ Although he was a touch unnerved at the thought of sitting through more of her tea parties with her dolls and bears. When Gertie opened her next present she found a Raggedy Andy doll which was the brother for her Raggedy Ann doll.

_I am so happy to be here and to finally be able to know my long lost sister!_ E.T. heard the boy rag doll thinking excitedly and he was happy for it.

When Michael opened his present he found it was just what he wanted, the Atari 8000 along with games like Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, and The Super Mario Bros. In the next presents he opened he found a skateboard and bicycle helmet similar to Elliot's except they were somewhat bigger and longer and had a Dungeons and Dragons symbol painted across their surfaces.

The children then went to their Christmas stockings which were hung up by the fireplace. In Gertie's she found a dozen pieces of costume jewelry like beaded bracelets, shining necklaces, clip on earrings, and rainbow colored rings. In Elliot's he found a dozen pieces of rock candy which he divided generously between himself and E.T. and E.T. thought it so wonderfully peculiar that rocks could taste so good, after all the Reese's Pieces had been one thing but rocks were another thing altogether.

In Micheal's stocking he found a whole new set of a dozen marbles which he quickly showed E.T. how to play with as he would aim the biggest marble called the shooter at one and try to get it to hit as many others as it could and whichever one got the most would win. E.T. was able to enhance the game by making the marbles glow as he levitated his shooter and had it magnetically attract all of the marbles.

Mary looked on at her children as they all happily tried out their new things and she felt this Christmas was almost perfect, all that was missing was their father without whom none of this would have been possible.

Her reflective thoughts were abruptly interrupted by a sudden knock upon the front door. She promptly went to answer it and found none other than Keys standing on the doorstep and holding four wrapped packages in his arms.

"Why Keys! What a pleasant surprise!" Mary said smiling as she stepped aside to let him in.

"Aw, come on! You knew I was coming!" Keys laughed as he set the presents down on the coffee table.

Keys then knelt down as the kids all crowded joyously around him and embraced him one after the other and he hugged them all back. Then he looked up and saw E.T.

He approached him slowly though he really wasn't far away at all. "E.T...? That is what they call you, isn't it?" he asked a bit hesitantly.

E.T. nodded with a tranquil expression on his aged face.

Keys knelt so that he was at eye level with E.T. "Do you remember me?" he asked. E.T. nodded. "I was wondering actually if you remember me from about twenty-five years ago," he said and E.T. looked at him quizzically.

"It was the evening of August 2, 1957," Keys continued solemnly. "I was little boy then about as tall as you an Elliot. You came to the site where I was camping with my family and we met, we came face to face, and you tried to speak to me but I couldn't understand your language and I got so frightened but I think I then frightened you even more because you were the first to run away. I felt kinda guilty after I watched you leave in your spaceship and I promised myself that somehow I would meet you again to tell you I'm sorry, and then I did meet you again only to scare you away again and so it must have been because of my being so intruding that you were left behind on this Earth and you nearly died from a breathing disease, but then Elliot saved you when I wasn't able to and I certainly see why you love him so much, I do too. Then you left once again in your spaceship and I never got a chance to talk to you yet again and now that I can I really don't know if you can understand my language when I tell you that I am completely sorry for frightening you the first time and the second time for what I put you through, me and my team, and now I am afraid you can't understand when I beg for your forgiveness."

A calm, serene smile spread across E.T.'s face. "E.T. understands and E.T. forgives," he said reassuringly "I just didn't recognize when we met again because you are so much taller now but now I see you never meant me any harm at all. The only thing E.T. wants to know is why you allowed so many scary white hooded men to imprison him?"

Keys sighed with regret. "Most of them were my colleagues and I agreed with them to track you down and find out if you really were an extra-terrestrial being. We humans can be just as curious as you. And then when we saw you were dying we just wanted to try to do everything we could to save you, and when it turned out we couldn't as it seemed I was more heartbroken than I had ever been in my life."

E.T. gave a somewhat understanding smile and then looked at Keys more seriously. "Only my people had the power to save me then, but they could do nothing with you and your own crew in the way of them and this was why things turned out as they did, though perhaps it was for the best they did anyway."

"Yes, I do understand it all now," admitted Keys sorrowfully. "If there is anything we or I alone can do to make it up to you I would really like to know."

E.T. smiled thoughtfully. "I might like to tell you to stop looking for extra-terrestrial beings but then I somehow feel it wouldn't be right to, and so all I ask is that you find a more peaceful way of finding and observing them, like how me and my colleagues find and observe plant life and we study them but we never do anything they wouldn't want us to do because we learn everything we can about them beforehand so that we know what is right and what is wrong for them."

"Yes, of course we will," Keys promised. "We are in the process of developing special telescopic equipment which can see onto other planets in other solar systems and also special sonar which can track signs of other life from other worlds. And if we should need any assistance in learning about what we happen to find with them can you help us?"

"Of course," said E.T. "I'm only a phone call away."

Keys smiled and chuckled, and then to his surprise E.T. reached out his long arms and embraced him.

As the Taylor family looked on with awe there came yet another knock at the door and when Mary opened it an elderly couple stepped inside carrying a load of three big packages each.

"Great Lord!" exclaimed the old woman. "I thought that cab driver would never get us here!"

"Well, it's not like he could keep up in the traffic," replied the old man. "You could have at least given him a tip."

"Grandma! Grandpa!" the three kids exclaimed in unison as the rushed forward to embrace them and barely giving them time to put their packages down.

"Merry Christmas dears," said their grandma as she smothered them in hugs and kisses.

"Michael! You have grown into such a fine young man!" said his grandpa as he looked him over.

"Elliot, you have grown a full inch since the last time I saw you!" said his grandma bending down to look at him. "And Gertie must have grown two or three at least!"

It was then they noticed E.T. for the first time. They suddenly became very quiet though they kept smiling and after a moment their grandma spoke. "Well, who is your new friend over there?'

"Grandma, Grandpa," said Elliot proudly. "May I introduce E.T., he is an extra-terrestrial and he is my my best friend in the whole universe."

"Greetings!" E.T. said warmly to the old couple.

"Oh my Lord! A real extra-terrestrial!" the grandma gasped in joy and surprise. "I'd always hoped I'd see one someday!"

"And I'm glad it was before we checked out of this Earth hotel!" the grandpa added happily.

"You mean you really believe in aliens?" asked Michael in surprise.

"Certainly," said the grandma. "We always did, especially after the news of the Roswell Crashing of the 40s."

"We're wondering if you know anything about it?" asked the grandpa to E.T.

"They were representatives of the planet Ceala," E.T. said. "And they had come to Earth because they knew the Earth was at a time of war of prejudice and so many lives were being lost unnecessarily and as they were not as shy towards humans as me and my race are they decided to fly to one of the battlements and try to put a stop to the war by informing them of the true meaning of life and the universe and what you should be doing instead of killing each other all the time. But unfortunately there was a shortage of fuel in their spaceship, for unlike my race they fly their crafts with fuel, and so they had a crash landing a few miles from their intended destination."

"Oh my Lord!" the grandma said again. "Well, what is the true meaning of life and the universe?"

"Ah! I cannot tell you those," E.T. said. "But since you are both more than eighty years old you should find out soon enough."

"Do you know anything else that we don't know that you can tell us?" asked the grandpa hopefully. "What is the Loch Ness Monster? You see, I'm of Scottish origins and I always wanted to know."

"It is a descendant of one of the dinosaurs of the Triassic period called a Platheosaurus," E.T. replied.

"Oh my Lord!" said the grandma again. "I living dinosaur!"

"What about Bigfoot?" asked the Grandpa. "What is he? I'd always wanted to know about him."

"He is a descendant of a giant ape called the Gigantaphithicus," replied E.T. "And you need not fear him as he is more afraid of you than you are of him and that is why he prefers not to be seen, just like me and my crew were before I met Elliot."

"E.T. was lost when his crew left him behind two months ago and I took him in when he came to me," Elliot explained. "I found out he likes Reese's Pieces, and he is so smart he actually built a transmitter out of junk we had around the house and called his crew with it and they came for him, and on our way to the spaceship he actually took me flying on my bicycle while he was riding in the basket!"

Elliot remembered the night he had flown with E.T. on his bike.

_Elliot had been pedaling until the ground beneath them had become too hard and too bumpy on his wheels. "It's too bumpy. We'll have to walk from he-re..." The words were barely out of his mouth when suddenly his bicycle began moving forward again seemingly on its own accord._

"_E.T.! He exclaimed, not sure what he was doing now._

_They moved faster and faster picking up speed until they came to a cliff in the middle of the road. Elliot held his breath and closed his eyes as he felt them speeding off the cliff and taking a dive. However, instead of falling they rose up into the air again as if an invisible hand had pushed them up into the air._

_Then to his astonishment they began gliding upward higher and higher somewhat like when he was pushing himself upward on the swings at the playground. Looking around he saw the trees falling below them farther and farther away._

_Elliot continued pedaling his bicycle as fast as he could. "Not so high! Not so high!" he exclaimed as his heart tightened in his chest and he felt like it burst both from fear and from pleasure._

_E.T. obeyed and they soared just overhead of the tree tops. _I'm flying! I'm flying! _Elliot thought as he laughed as he screamed with happiness and exhilaration._

_They soared gracefully through the air and passed by the moon shining full in the dark night sky. _

"You flew on a bicycle!" his grandpa exclaimed. "When I was your age if I wanted to fly on anything I'd tie myself to a kite!"

"E.T. came back here to spend Christmas with us!" Elliot continued. "Me and him have this strange connection, too. I can feel anything he feels at any time even if we are in completely different places."

"That is because you have a great feeling of empathy for life," said his grandpa wisely. "It runs in your family. I can always feel what your grandma feels at any time and place myself.

Elliot looked lovingly at his grandparents and felt that with them and E.T. and Keys here this was the most perfect Christmas. Then he looked down and felt it was still missing his dad being here.

"Mom, where's Dad?" he asked.

Mary had been dreading this question ever since yesterday and she still had no idea how to answer though she would have to try now. "Elliot... he," she began but never got to finish for just then there was another loud knock on the door. Grateful for the distraction she went to answer it and was curious as to who else could be here now.

When she opened the door to her surprise and Elliot's great joy they found his dad standing there.

"I'm sorry I'm a bit late," he said. "May I come in?"

"Oh my! I -I mean of course!" Mary said in shock and disbelief as she stumbled to the side and let him in the doorway.

"Dad!" Elliot exclaimed as he ran up to him and embraced him hard and tightly. "I thought you were in Mexico?"

"I was," he said. "But I've come back because I love you and I want nothing more than to be with you right now."

After he and Elliot hugged for a few more moments he looked up and noticed E.T. for the first time and he knew at once he had to be an alien being of some kind, the strangest thing was he felt as if he had known he was here all along. He approached him and could somehow sense that the alien already knew about him.

"Friends and family are the only thing worth celebrating in this life,"said E.T..

"It is true," he said.

They all enjoyed Christmas day together and it was just after dinner that E.T. announced it was time for him to leave. "They'll be coming for me any minute," he said. "We must get to the landing site before dark."

Elliot nodded in understanding. "Before you go I want to give you something." He went up to the stocking hung by the chimney which had E.T. written on it and took out a bag full of Reese's Pieces. "Here, take these back with you," he said."

"Thank you, Elliot," said E.T. as he thought about his companions being able to finally taste this miracle candy themselves.

"I have something for you, too, E.T.," said Gertie. She went over to the tree and took a small green bag from under it.

"It isn't much, but it's the best I could do on such short notice," she said as she handed him the bag.

E.T. reached into the bag and pulled out a small fuzzy light brown teddy bear with a pale pink ribbon tied around its neck.

"Hello. Will you be my friend?" asked the teddy bear to E.T.

"I hope you like him," said Gertie.

Tears filled E.T.'s big blue eyes as he smiled toothily at Gertie and exclaimed, "I love him!" He was so happy to now have one of the marvelous little beings known as stuffed toys to be able to take home with him and get to know it and show it to his companions. He threw his arms around Gertie and embraced her in a thankful hug.

Gertie smiled glad that she actually had succeeded in giving E.T. the best present she could. "What are you going to name him?" she asked.

E.T. thought for a moment. "Zrek," he said at last.

Then they all, the Taylor family along with the grandparents and Keys, piled into the car and drove E.T. to the bald spot in the forest where his spaceship was to pick him up.

Very shortly after they arrived, about five minutes later, the spaceship descended from the heavens and parked itself onto the ground in the center of the landing site.

Then everyone gave E.T. a big goodbye hug and when it was Elliot's turn he grasped E.T.'s hand and said, "I love you so much, E.T., and I always will! You mean so much to me, you have made a real difference in my life. I have to know if I will see you again."

E.T. smiled as he looked up at Elliot with his big, warm, kind, wisdom filled blue eyes and said, "You will, Elliot. I promise you will, for you mean so much to me to and have also made a real difference in my life, and perhaps even the whole universe as we speak. Remember you are very special kind of human being, and never forget it."

Elliot hugged E.T. again, and then E.T. with the bag of Reese's Pieces in one hand and the teddy bear in the other, walked up the gangplank of the spaceship. Once he was on board the doors closed and it rose into the air as it had the last time flying higher and higher until it was the first star in the sky, and then zoomed away leaving behind a rainbow trail of vapor in its path.

* * *

A/N: The end of this story and I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have writing it. I really do want to write a sequel to it (probably TWO sequels). Please leave your reviews and mention in them if you can what you might like to have in a sequel.


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